Odisha Public Examinations Act 2024: Who It Covers

If you sit an exam run by the Odisha Public Service Commission, the central anti-cheating Act of 2024 does not name your exam. Odisha wrote its own law for exactly that gap, published as Odisha Act 1 of 2025 on 12 February 2025.

Two different statutes are in play, and they do not overlap. The central Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 has a Schedule made up of central bodies. The Odisha Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 has its own Schedule, and section 2(1)(l) repeats the same list in the definition of a public examination authority.

Being named in the Schedule is not the same thing as the Act being switched on. Section 1(2) says the Act shall come into force on such date as the State Government may, by notification in the Official Gazette, appoint, and as of 30 August 2026 no such notification has been traced. Read that alongside our page on the central exam paper leak law and its 2026 penalties, which is in force and was raised with effect from 31 July 2026.

Go down this in order. Each step decides the next one.

1. Find the body that actually conducts the exam. Not the department you will work for, and not the coaching institute. The Act follows the conducting authority, not the post.
2. Is that body a central one? UPSC, SSC, a Railway Recruitment Board, IBPS or the National Testing Agency puts you under the central Act, which has been in force since 21 June 2024 and carries higher numbers since 31 July 2026.
3. Is it one of the nine entries in the Odisha Schedule? If yes, the Odisha Act is written for your exam. Section 2(1)(k) defines a public examination as any examination conducted by the public examination authority, or conducted by such other authority as may be notified by the State Government.
4. Are you a candidate for the purposes of the Act? Section 2(1)(a) covers a person who has been granted permission by the public examination authority to appear in public examination, and it extends to a scribe on his behalf in the public examination. So a scribe writing for a blind or injured candidate is inside the definition, not outside it.
5. If the body is in neither Schedule, neither statute reaches it today. The State Government can add an authority under item 9 of the Odisha Schedule, but until it does, a private test or a university internal paper is governed by ordinary criminal law and the institution's own rules.
6. Then check the start date. Everything in the Odisha Act, including every penalty below, hangs on the section 1(2) notification. That is the one fact worth an RTI application, and it is the last step here because it applies whichever Schedule entry you landed on.

Take an illustrative case. A candidate sits an OSSC written test, and a screenshot of the question paper is circulating an hour before the bell. OSSC is Schedule item 2, so the Odisha Act is the law written for that situation. Whether it can be used on that day still turns on the notification under section 1(2). Nothing here is a report of a real leak, real FIR or real prosecution.

Section 3 is a list, and it is wider than copying in the hall. It expressly includes leakage of question paper or answer key or part thereof, participating in collusion with others to effect leakage of question paper or answer key, tampering with answer sheets including Optical Mark Recognition response sheets, and altering the assessment except to correct a bona fide error without any authority.

It also reaches the paperwork and the plumbing around the exam. Section 3 lists manipulation in seating arrangements, allocation of dates and shifts for the candidates, tampering with the computer network or a computer resource or a computer system, creation of fake website to cheat or for monetary gain, and conduct of fake examination, issuance of fake admit cards or offer letters to cheat or for monetary gain.

Three duties sit next to that list.

• Section 4 says no person or group of persons or institutions shall collude or conspire to facilitate indulgence in any such unfair means.
• Section 6 stops a paper setter supplying the question paper drawn by him to anyone, except on written instructions from the appointing authority.
• Section 7 puts the reporting duty on the institution, not on you. Where an offence under sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 is committed, the public examination authority or the service provider shall forthwith report the offence to the concerned police authorities. Under section 9(2), a service provider that fails to report incidence of any unfair means is itself deemed to have committed an offence.

One more offence is easy to miss. Section 8 makes it an offence for a service provider, or a person associated with it, to use any premises other than the authorized examination center for the exam without the written approval of the public examination authority, unless the change was forced by a force majeure event.

Investigation is not left to a local station writer. Section 13(1) requires an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police or Assistant Commissioner of Police to investigate, and section 13(2) lets the State Government refer the investigation to any State Investigating Agency.

Odisha's scale was fixed in the 2024 Act and has not moved since. The central scale was raised with effect from 31 July 2026. On every line of the table below, the State figure now sits at or under the central one.

Read the fine wording closely, because the three constructions in the Odisha Act are not the same. Section 11(1) is a fine up to ten lakh rupees, a ceiling. Section 11(2) is a fine up to one crore rupees on the service provider, again a ceiling, and proportionate cost of the examination is recovered on top. Section 11(3) is different: a director or senior manager of a service provider who consented to or connived at the offence faces not less than three years but which may extend to ten years and with fine of one crore rupees, a fixed figure. Section 12(1) sets a floor instead, fine which shall not be less than one crore rupees, and section 12(2) adds that where an institution is involved in organised crime, its property shall be subjected to attachment and forfeiture.

Two more things the Odisha Act settles. Section 10 is short: All offences under this Act, shall be cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable. Section 16 says the Act is in addition to, and not in derogation of, any other law for the time being in force, so it does not displace the ordinary criminal law.

The Act was assented to by the Governor on the 3rd day of February, 2025 and published by the Law Department on 12 February 2025 under notification No.2318-I-Legis-22/2024/L as Odisha Act 1 of 2025. Publication of an Act and commencement of an Act are two separate events. Section 1(2) reserves commencement for a later gazette notification, and no such notification has been traced as of 30 August 2026.

That matters in a very practical way. Section 17 lets the State Government make rules by notification, and section 2(1)(d) leaves the conduct of a public examination to be prescribed by those rules. So a reader trying to work out what is enforceable on a given exam day needs two documents, not one: the commencement notification, and the rules. Ask for both by name. If you have never filed in the State before, start with how to file an RTI in Odisha and use the AI RTI Drafter to keep the wording tight.

No. The Schedule to the central Act lists central bodies such as UPSC, SSC, the Railway Recruitment Boards, IBPS and the National Testing Agency. OPSC and OSSC are not among them. That absence is the reason Odisha legislated separately, and the Odisha Schedule names both at items 1 and 2.

Section 1(2) makes commencement depend on a State Government notification in the Official Gazette, and no such notification has been traced as of 30 August 2026. Do not treat that as a final answer. Ask the Law Department for the notification number and date, and treat a written reply as the only reliable proof either way.

The Act itself says offences under it are cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable, and section 13 puts investigation with an officer of at least Deputy Superintendent of Police rank. Whether this particular Act can be invoked on a given date depends on the section 1(2) notification. Section 16 keeps the ordinary criminal law fully available in the meantime.

Under section 7, the public examination authority or the service provider must forthwith report the offence to the police, and where the service provider reports it, it must also inform the examination authority. A candidate is not the reporting authority under this Act. That is useful to know when you ask an exam body what it did and when it did it.

No. The Odisha Act is about offences, punishment, and investigation. It creates no re-examination, no revaluation and no candidate appeal. Those remedies come from the exam body's own rules and from RTI, which is why getting your answer sheet under RTI and challenging a result through revaluation remain the practical route.

Not as the Schedule stands. It runs from the Odisha Public Service Commission down to Departments of the State Government recruiting staff, plus item 9, which is any other authority the State Government notifies. A board or university exam comes in only if the State Government notifies that authority, so check for a notification before assuming coverage.

Almost every argument in this article ends at the same missing piece of paper. So ask for it. When a candidate is refused information about a leak, a cancelled paper or a delayed result, the first fight is usually about which authority is even answerable, and a one line notification settles it.

Send a short application to the Public Information Officer of the Law Department, Government of Odisha, asking three things: whether the notification appointing the date of commencement under section 1(2) of the Odisha Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024 has been issued; its number and date; and a copy of it. Send the same three questions to the exam body itself, naming your exam, and add a fourth: which Act that body applies to unfair means in its exams today.

A commencement notification either exists with a number and a date or it does not. That is a one line answer, so the 30 day reply clock is generous here. If day 30 passes in silence, that is deemed refusal and your first appeal window opens for 30 days from that date. Track both windows with the RTI Timeline Calculator, and if the reply is silence or a brush off, build the appeal with the First Appeal Builder. If a PIO says the subject is not theirs, section 6(3) of the RTI Act requires the application to be transferred to the correct public authority within five days, and a refusal to transfer is itself worth appealing. The text of the RTI Act sits on our RTI Act 2005 page.

If you are preparing for State selections, the coverage question is worth settling before you sit the paper, not after. See applying for State PSC civil services, using RTI when a result is delayed and the government jobs guide. For the full method of turning one refused reply into a paper trail, read The RTI Playbook.