In a significant move, 38 Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and Members of Parliament (MPs) from Gujarat have submitted a written representation to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel and Forest-Environment Minister Mulubhai Bera. The petition calls for an increase in vacancies for the special Forest Beat Guard exam recruitment and the abolition of the ComputerBased Recruitment Test (CBRT) system.

In August, Gandhinagar saw a week-long agitation by aspirants who failed to clinch one of 823 vacancies for forest beat guards. They cited issues with the language of the test, technical glitches, variations in difficulty levels and the method used to process scores as flaws in the system. They called for the CBRT to be abolished and for their marks to be published. 

Now, their elected representatives from across the political spectrum have banded together to take up their cause. The petition submits that many students feel the CBRT system has caused injustice to forest candidates. It criticises the normalisation system in CBRT exams for potentially lowering high-scoring candidates' marks while increasing low-scoring candidates’ marks. The politicians have requested an increase in recruitment vacancies and that all candidates' marks be published in PDF format

The signatories include:

BJP MLAs:

Pradyumansinh Jadeja (Abdasa)

Kanchanben Radadiya (Thakkarbapa Nagar)

Karshan Solanki (Kadi)

Kalpesh Parmar (Matar)

Mukesh Patel (Olpad)

Sejal Pandya (Bhavnagar East)

JV Kakadiya (Dhari) 

Ambarish Der (Rajula, Formerly Congress)

Malti Maheshwari (Gandhidham)

Pravin Ghoghari (Karanj)

Keshubhai Patel (Bhuj)

Aniruddha Dave (Mandvi)

Kirit “KK” Patel (Unjha)

Pravinkumar Mali (Deesa)

Virendrasinh Jadeja (Rapar)

Ganpatsinh Vasava (Mangrol)

Dr Jairam Gamit (Nizar)

Laxmanji Thakor (Kalol-Gandhinagar) 

Mahesh Kaswala (Savarkundla) 

Balrajsinh Chauhan (Dahegam)

Hardik Patel (Viramgam)

Arjunsinh Chauhan (Mehmedabad) 

Mukesh Patel (Mehsana)

Arvind Ladani (Manavadar)

Amrut Thakor (Kankrej)

Ritaben Patel (Gandhinagar North)

Sanjaysinh Mahida (Mahudha)

Aam Aadmi Party MLAs:

Hemant Khava (Jamjodhpur)

Chaitar Vasava (Dediapada)

Congress MLAs:

Dr Tushar Chaudhary (Khedbrahma) 

Jignesh Mevani (Vadgam)

Anant Patel (Bansda)

Independent MLA: 

Dhavalsinh Jhala (Bayad)

BJP MPs:

Jashubhai Rathwa

Shobnaben Baraiya

Congress MP:

Geniben Thakor

This united front of politicians from different parties highlights the significance of the issue and puts pressure on the Gujarat government to address the concerns raised about the Forest Beat Guard exam 

How Normalisation works

For instance, five candidates score 70, 80, 90, 85, and 75, respectively. The mean, or average, in this case is 80. So Candidate A, with 70 points, is -10 points away from the average. Candidate C is +10 points away from the average; Candidates D and E are +5 and -5 away from the mean, respectively. So the typical difference, or standard deviation, is + or - 7.5 points from the mean score of 80. 

To get the normalised score, one subtracts the average score and divides the result by the standard deviation. So the normalised score for the candidate with 90 points would be +1.33, while it would be -1.33 for the candidate with 70 points.