New Delhi: As a veteran sub-divisional engineer in Haryana , Singh hasn’t prepared for any test in the last 25 years. Not even when he had to take the annual departmental examination for a promotion and a salary increment. It was always treated as a formality, and many engineers didn’t clear it, including Singh. This year, though, the civil engineer’s failure became news.

For the first time, the professional competency exam was conducted by the Haryana Institute of Public Administration (HIPA) rather than internally by the PWD. When the results were announced last week, they quickly turned into headlines. Only seven out of 61 assistant and sub-divisional engineers passed all the papers. The other 89 per cent were held up as evidence that the government’s claims

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