In a press release on Friday, July 28, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) clarified that the news about question papers of the Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner (APFC) examination being leaked is fake. "On the basis of a detailed and thorough analysis of events and data, the Commission is of the firm view that rumours doing rounds on social media are baseless and devoid of merit," UPSC stated.

Recently, several students posted purported pictures of the question papers on social media before the exam came to an end. "Few images of portion of question papers have been uploaded on different social media portals after the conduct of examination. By then, lakhs of question papers were in the hands of all those examinees who appeared in the examination and the Commission had also uploaded question paper on the website. Therefore, such inputs are neither credible nor actionable on the part of the Commission," UPSC said.

The exam candidates had also alleged that there were malpractices during the exam at the centres. "The Commission noted this event and did a complete scrutiny of the processes and checks of the examination in all the centres across the country. Nothing worthy of suspicion was found," the press release says.

"Also, as a matter of abundant caution, it analysed the data of the result of the examination at all levels of the merit list to find any unusual trend. It was clearly observed that the merit positions of qualified and unqualified candidates at every level are in order and as per the performance of examinees," the document says further, adding, "As regards to more candidates getting qualified from some centres, it is stated that in open competitions this is not unusual."