PATNA, Aug. 17 -- Independent MP from Purnea, Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, sat on a day-long fast at the Gardanibagh protest site in Patna on Sunday, throwing his weight behind aspirants, demanding the cancellation of the 70th Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) combined competitive examination and greater transparency across recruitment tests. The Congress aligned MP joined a day-long dharna organised by the All Bihar Student Union and research scholars who have been agitating for nearly two weeks. Holding a portrait of Bhagat Singh, the MP told reporters that the students' demands were legitimate and that successive governments had failed to ensure fairness in competitive examinations. "Transparency must be established in every examination linked to jobs," he said. "The students' demands are justified. The government should fulfil them at the earliest." He warned that if the authorities continued to ignore the protesters, he would call for a Bihar bandh and, if necessary, launch an indefinite hunger strike. Yadav also criticised the state and central governments, alleging irregularities, paper leaks, inconsistent marking, police action against demonstrators, and what he described as excessive weightage given to English in government exams. He pointed to research scholars who have been on hunger strike for 13 days over issues including the implementation of UGC regulations for assistant professor recruitment and domicile policy, saying neither the chief minister nor the education minister had responded. The 70th BPSC preliminary examination, held on December 13, 2024, remains the flashpoint. At the Bapu Pariksha Parisar centre in Patna, chaos erupted amid claims of delayed paper distribution and a question-paper leak. Refuting charges of paper leak, the BPSC had cancelled the exam only at that centre, where around 12,000 aspirants took the test, and conducted re-test in early January 2025. The BPSC and the Patna High Court refused to take note of the aspirants' call for a statewide cancellation, citing insufficient evidence of widespread malpractice. Unfazed by the authorities' rejection, BPSC aspirants continued with staging protests intermittently ever since, drawing support from various political figures and student groups. Yadav's intervention comes amid broader discontent over recruitment processes in Bihar. Protesters are also pressing for the early conduct of pending BSSC examinations and systemic reforms to restore faith in the system. Parallel agitation continues in neighbouring Jharkhand over the JPSC examination, where students have been protesting for more than three weeks....