Suicide of a 28 year old young UPSC aspirant raises many questions?

THE unfortunate death of a 28 year of Union Public Service Commission aspirant from Karnataka n son of a retired govt employee Varun Subhash Chandra through commiting suicide by hanging to the fan at his Rajendra Nagar house in New Delhi on 4th of June as he was not allowed to appear in the preliminary entrance examination for being merely four minutes late despite his repeated humble requests has literally shattered me from inside as well as, might be, millions of others in the country who’d gone through this most distressing, shocking and anguishing news.

What is bad about this whole story is, the invigilator on duty never gives a rethinking or adopts a humanitarian angle to excuse the examinee and allow him for the exam than just denying him the chance for being just three, four minutes late. One would appreciate that the the person appearing for entrance exams, particularly for job avenues is already under tremendous mental and psychological pressure due to the poor or unstable econmic family backgroud. He or she devote their several days in preparation for such exams and are usually under abject pressure.

On reaching examination centres they get late for various compelling reasons like traffic congestion, hot weather conditions or their house being far away from the examination centres. The government agencies, conducting such exams should give a grace of atleast 15 minutes in such cases and instead, being adamant should satisfy themselves with genuine reasoning and allow entrance examination aspirants to appear than to just arrogantly, kick them out for merey being four minutes late as was the case with the 28 year old studious aspirant Varun Subhash Chandra.

There are hundreds of options to resolve such issues of late arrivals of the aspirants instead, sending them back resulting in cases of suicides and subsequent deaths. Majority of the students or such aspirants of UPSC exams do several days or months’ hard work in preparations in order to qualify them with flying colours and also invest hard earned money of their parents in such preparations. Therefore they are under mental and psycological pressures and are therefore unintentionally late by few minutes in cases of exception at examination centres as was this case. There are several other genuine reasons too for being negligibly late. In this case Varun had gone in a huff in some other Sarvodaya School in Paharganj construing it for the examination centre as was therefore late by mere 4 minutes.

But being harsh, adamant and non coperative with them is no solution to the problem. Now who would be resposible for the untimely death of this young gentleman and can the UPSC return back this son to the most traumatic and angushing parents. A brilliant son has lost his life just because his repeated genuine requests to let him sit in the exam were turned down by the person on duty in the examination hall for being merely four minute late and that too since he went to a wrong centre in a hurry n huff.

This is simply absurd and unacceptable. How can any one play with one’s career by just disallowing him or her to sit in exams for being late for few minutes without even thinking about the aftermath consequences. There are hundreds of such unfortunate cases happening all over the country in which intelligent and studious students are commiting suicides due to the adamant and non cooperative attitude of the people or officers in the sysyem. On the one hand we allegedly witness hundreds of thousands of cases of open cheating in exams at the behest of certain corrupt officials or managements of certain private institutions in league with the authorities concerned and cases of fake degress with the involvement of ministers and higher ups, going unnoticed or caught after they achieve political benefits on the other hand the innocent entrants are denied chances to appear in entrant examinations for just being few minutes late leading to suicides under psychlogical trauma n pressures as was the case with brilliant 28 year old boy from Karnataka.

Just imagine, what would be the conditiin of his reyired father, mother and the entire family who’d imparted him goodeducation, invested so much money to nurse his academic career and who was wishing to clear the UPSC entrance exam for a better future by seeking a job for future sustenance and career making. I am stunned, shocked and anguished. Such traumatic and shocking incidents warrants government agencies to find a wayout by relaxing rules to the convenience of the candidates appearing for various entrant exams government departments so as to ensure non occurance of suicides that happen due to the depression caused by denial to appear in these competetive entrance tests. In addition, the family of the deceased should be adequately financially compensated and an impartial inquiry launched to transparently arrive at the aspects of this unfortunate suicide death.

My heartfelt symapathies for the bereaved family and a question to one and all:

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS VALUABLE YOUNG UNTIMELY DEMISE FOR BEING LATE FOR JUST FOUR MINUTES ?