It’s been nearly a decade since Dharamveer Singh, 31, began trying to crack the UP Provincial Civil Service (PCS) exam. A native of Gorakhpur, he did an MSc from Allahabad University, and thereafter, has been working relentlessly with one mission. He was called for an int­erview in the year 2013 after he cleared the prelims and the mains, but he couldn’t make it to the final list. The rejections didn’t dampen his spirits. But a sequence of events that began in 2015 clearly affected him.

Allegations on the fairness of how the exam was conducted began doing the rounds in 2015, inviting a CBI probe. The probe caused delays in the subsequent exam process. The final results of the 2016 exam haven’t been announced to this day! Despite this result freeze, the processes for the 2017 and 2018 exams were started, and the aspirants, clueless about their 2016 scores, had no choice but to write those exams too.

“I feel as if I am running without a finish line. It has made me so negative,” says Dharamveer, who recently app­eared for the...