The Dog Who Almost Wrote the ITI Exam

In June 2015, a West Bengal student downloaded his vocational entrance admit card and found a stray dog staring back at him from the candidate photo box.

---

On 26 June 2015, Soumyadip Mahato — an 18-year-old from Midnapore, West Bengal — walked into a cyber cafe to print his admit card for the ITI Common Entrance Test. All his details were perfect: name, roll number, examination centre.

The photograph, however, was of a dog.

Not a passport-style portrait of Soumyadip Mahato. A clean, cheerful headshot of a light-brown street dog.

---

How It Happened

The West Bengal State Council for Vocational Training ran its exam portal through a third-party server with the kind of image filing system that IT professionals describe, charitably, as "not ideal." Student photos were stored using generic sequential filenames rather than unique applicant IDs. Somewhere in the chain — possibly a cache collision during high-traffic upload sessions at a shared cyber cafe — Soumyadip's photo slot was overwritten with a stray image file that had no business being on a government admission portal.

The server didn't notice. The department didn't notice. The printed credential came out: all official seals intact, Controller of Examinations signature present, candidate photograph: dog.

---

The Day Before the Exam

While the internet would later find this hilarious, Soumyadip spent the entire day before his exam in a state of quiet panic. He sprinted between the local ITI nodal office, the government technical education department, and regional news studios — waving the admit card and pleading that he had not, in fact, uploaded a dog.

The state's Technical Education Minister, Ujjal Biswas, was not initially sympathetic:

"We need to ascertain whether the student uploaded this himself to malign the department, or whether a cyber cafe operator played mischief."

Soumyadip's evidence — the physical application form counterfoil bearing his actual photograph — eventually cleared him. The nodal officer issued a manually certified replacement card.

The internet, meanwhile, had already christened the dog "Engineer Tommy" and was debating which vocational trade — electrician, welder, fitter — best suited his skill set.

---

The Grand Finale

The next morning, Soumyadip arrived at the examination centre with his corrected admit card — exhausted, vindicated, and ready to finally write the test he had spent months preparing for.

The exam was cancelled.

A statewide paper leak had been discovered. The West Bengal State Council for Vocational Training suspended the entire ITI CET across the state before a single answer could be written.

Soumyadip Mahato had fought a one-man bureaucratic battle against a dog-faced admit card, obtained justice, and arrived at the examination gate — only to find it locked.

He was allowed to appear in the rescheduled examination later that year. He passed.

---

Chronological Timeline: INC-ABS-2015-WB-005

---

Sources & Further Reading

1. WBSCVT ITI CET Hall Ticket No. CET-2015/09428 — West Bengal State Council for Vocational Training (Official record)
2. "Bengal student gets ITI admit card with dog's picture" — Hindustan Times, 28 June 2015. hindustantimes.com
3. "West Bengal Student Gets Admit Card with Dog's Photo" — NDTV, 28 June 2015. ndtv.com
4. "ITI exam cancelled after paper leak" — Times of India, 29 June 2015. timesofindia.com