History repeats itself

NAPOLEON Bonaparte said that history is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon. In the recent Delhi University examination for the BCom fifth semester, the question paper was found to be a replica of that distributed in the varsity’s School of Open Learning annual exam. The administration department claimed that the question papers had been set by a board of three teachers from various colleges. Despite all such checks and balances, this plagiarism has put the administration in an embarrassing situation. Similar claims have unravelled in the past when reputed institutions and universities have picked up a few questions from various sources to prepare a bouquet of question papers. In the final examination of Direct Taxes conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in November 2014, in most of the question papers, old questions were presented with hardly any alterations. A similar instance was noticed in the examination of IPCC tax papers also in November and in earlier examinations conducted by the institute.