NEW DELHI: Indicating the pressure to perform and the need to deflect parental anger, some candidates have been

the

of the

(NEET) and

(JEE-main) to show they scored higher marks than shown. Having perpetrated the

, some of the

convinced their parents to approach the authorities for corrective measures. The

, health ministry and National Testing Agency (NTA) received 30 complaints about discrepancies that subsequent investigation proved to be cases of forgery. NTA has decided to file police complaints about these.

According to documents accessed by TOI, the faking was so smartly carried out that NTA had to retrieve the answer booklets and take a re-look. In one case, the candidate, having changed the percentile scores of two of the three question sections and the overall rank in NEET, got his parent to send emails to the HRD and health ministries and NTA to say that the same candidate had been issued two differing mark sheets.

However, a simple error nailed his lie. “The candidate used the QR code of the real mark sheet on the forged document he sent to us,” an HRD ministry official disclosed. “On scanning the QR code, it took us to the results available online, the original and not the one mentioned in the forged document. To be doubly sure, we re-checked the answer book and found that the purported second result sheet was a fake.”

Other candidates complained of errors in evaluation and attached copies of the OMR (optical mark recognition) answer booklets to press their point. It is in the OMR booklet that the candidates record their response to questions by blackening option circles. Copies of this, called the OMR reading sheets, are available for download immediately after the test for JEE examinees and after a couple of days for NEET aspirants.

“The complainants attached copies of their OMR reading sheets after cleverly making changes. On cross-checking with their official OMR booklets and matching it with the OMR reading sheet, we discovered these were also cases of forgery,” the NTA official said.

According to NTA sources, the examination agency has so far received 30 such cases, the majority of them related to NEET UG 2019 and a few to JEE (Main) 2019. “After looking into the details of the cases, we will lodge police complaints for the fraud,” said an NTA official.

Taking recourse to forgeries like these seems to signify undue desperation among the aspirants. Counsellors attributed this attempt at fakery despite knowing the discrepancies are bound to be discovered to the tremendous pressure of parents, peers and society and the guilt they are made to feel if they can’t “perform”.

“One should not give a criminal colour to these acts,” suggested Pervin Malhotra, career counsellor. “Parents put a lot of pressure on their children. The moment a student finishes Class XII, everyone asks them whether they will become a doctor or an engineer. An answer to the contrary paints the kid as a duffer.”

Malhotra said this mindset had to change, and parents should be counselled that if their ward could not crack, say an MBBS entrance, there were 30 other options for a career in healthcare. She said both parents and students should be aware that there are more career options than the traditionally revered engineering and medical.