Soren Government Cancels JSSC-CGL and All TDPL Exams; Mahto Ends Fast

After a marathon Cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Hemant Soren announces Jharkhand will cancel the JSSC Combined Graduate Level (CGL) exam and every recruitment examination, result and selection conducted by outsourced vendor TDPL since 2014, and forms an exam-reforms committee headed by senior IAS officer Amitabh Kaushal. The state also blacklists TDPL. Devendra Nath Mahto, Umme Habiba and Rahul Kranti end their 16-day hunger strike as state ministers Dipika Pandey Singh and Irfan Ansari offer them juice; Mahto calls it 'a huge victory for Jharkhand' while reiterating the unmet demand for a CBI probe. The government declines the CBI demand, citing Supreme Court/High Court monitoring of the JSSC-CGL process, and instead proposes an expert panel drawn from ISM Dhanbad, IIM Ranchi and XLRI Jamshedpur.