For nearly three weeks, thousands of students and job aspirants have taken to the streets of Jharkhand’s capital, Ranchi, demanding accountability for alleged irregularities in the state’s civil service recruitment examinations. The immediate trigger is the controversy surrounding the 14th Jharkhand Public Service Combined Civil Services examination, held in April. A CBI probe into the state’s first and second civil services examinations — held in 2003 and 2005 — is still underway. During the Raghubar Das government’s tenure, from 2014 to 2019, no JPSC civil services examination was conducted. The 7th to 10th civil services examinations were held in 2021, followed by the combined 11th to 13th recruitment tests in 2024.