NEW DELHI - Mr Amit Yadav has dreamt of becoming an “ideal teacher”, someone students would fondly remember as a mentor even years after their schooling.

The 23-year-old spent nearly two years working to achieve his goal, studying for over five hours daily, before sitting a test for recruiting government school teachers in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, where he is from, in September 2021.

As many as 1.6 million candidates were in the fray for 31,000 posts. Mr Yadav scored 124 out of 150 and thought he had come within striking distance of his goal. But that dream unravelled quickly.

Reports emerged that the question paper had been leaked two days before the exam.

A copy was stolen from an education department office and shared with others, who reportedly paid as much as 1 million rupees (S$16,400) for each sample.

The state government ultimately cancelled the exam in February 2022.

“I was disheartened because it meant we would have to prepare all over again, that it could take another two to three years to find a job,” Mr Yadav told The Straits Times on Monday.

He sat the rescheduled exam in February 2023, and the results are yet to be released.

Now some states in India, including Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, are cracking down on the entrenched “exam paper mafia” by framing tough laws to protect the future of millions of hard-working students such as Mr Yadav, as well as to preserve the integrity of the recruitment processes.

Good private jobs are scarce in India, making stable government positions, such as the one Mr Yadav has been after, highly coveted.

This has engendered a culture of recurring recruitment exam paper leaks as desperate job seekers try all means, fair or foul, to land that job.

Papers have been leaked multiple times across many states. In Rajasthan, at least 12 recruitment drives have been cancelled since 2018 after test paper leaks.

Nefarious means – such as slippers rigged with communication devices to go with an inconspicuous earpiece – are not uncommon, as are paid impostors who take tests on someone else’s behalf.

In February 2023, Uttarakhand, a north Indian state, legislated an anti-copying law described as the “country’s strictest”.

It will apply to all competitive exams in the state.

Those involved in leaking papers could face a fine of up to 100 million rupees as well as life imprisonment.

Individuals cheating in examinations could be handed a three-year jail term and a fine of 500,000 rupees.

Gujarat, where as many as 11 papers were leaked in the past 11 years, also enacted a similar law in February. Rajasthan did so in March 2022, as did Haryana in August 2021.

In Uttarakhand, where multiple government recruitment drives were cancelled after paper leaks in recent years, the law was enacted hurriedly after unemployed youth hit the streets in the state’s capital of Dehradun in early February.

“Our demand is not that they must give us jobs,” said Mr Boby Panwar, 26, president of Uttarakhand Berozgaar Sangh, an association that represents the interests of unemployed youth in the state.

“The point is about corruption.”

The association has been leading the campaign against paper leaks in the state since 2018, besides exposing instances of leaks in government recruitment exams.

“We are demanding that deserving candidates should get jobs and vacancies be announced regularly and filled transparently,” said Mr Panwar.

He claims there have been “at least 12 to 15” instances of Uttarakhand government recruitment exams being tainted by allegations of leaks since 2018.

In February 2023, the police arrested the owner of a coaching centre in Roorkee in Uttarakhand, for allegedly distributing pilfered question papers for a 2018 government exam to recruit assistant and junior engineers.

He had sold the paper to each student for 1.9 million rupees and even helped them tackle it.

As many as 66 of the roughly 250 candidates who cleared the exam came from his centre.

But not everyone is convinced tough laws alone will help, given that the rot runs deep as well as high up the hierarchy.

In Uttarakhand, three senior government officials were arrested last October in connection with leaks for a 2016 recruitment exam, including a former chairman of the Uttarakhand Subordinate Service Selection Commission, which conducts some of these exams.

Another chairman of the commission resigned last August on “moral grounds”, claiming interference from the exam “mafia” as well as political leaders in government recruitments.

“Just having a law is not the solution. You will punish a few, but that will not solve the problem,” said Mr Ashok Agarwal, a senior advocate and an activist on education-related issues.

“The whole government machinery has to be cleansed and set in order – those who set the paper, the printing process and its transportation to the exam centre.”

Use of technology has been touted as a solution, given that it can eliminate vulnerable stages in the exam process and cut human involvement.

But Mr Swapnil Dharmadhikari, founder of Eklavvya, a firm that has developed an electronic question paper generation and delivery mechanism, said uptake has been slow because of lack of awareness as well as reluctance to adapt to new technologies.