“We have not decided on taking any prior permission from the court but in case we fail to publish the results on time, the state government will look into the matter,” said Asim Kumar Bose, member secretary of the JEE Board.

The JEE Board officials had said the examination could be conducted only after a month. “It is for the state government to decide when to conduct the examination but to conduct the examination properly we need time,” said Bose.

Meanwhile, the bail petitions of the duo— Arun Chowdhury and Mihir Dandapat — arrested for selling the JEE question papers were rejected by the additional judicial magistrate, Arun Nandi, at Ghatal on Sunday.

While, Chowdhury has been sent to 14 days in police custody, Dandapat has been remanded to 14 days in judicial custody. According to the police, Chowdhury had been involved in selling of JEE question papers over the past two years. His cousin Manas Patra, a staff of the state government-run Swaraswati Press in Kolkata, allegedly used to provide him the JEE papers.

The police have raided Patra’s residence at Konnagar in Hooghly and will soon arrest over a dozen of people involved in the business.

Sources said that a colleague of Chowdhury at Ghatal court tipped off the police about the rampant sell of question papers after the accused refused to sell him the papers at a lower price. The teachers of the government engineering colleges have, however, alleged that the paper leak and the subsequent postponement of the JEE indicate to a deep conspiracy to do away with the entrance examination to help the private engineering colleges .

“There is definitely a link between the racket behind the impostor candidates and the people who are selling the question papers. Such a huge level of corruption cannot exist without the backing of a section of officers of the higher education department and members of the JEEB,” said Diptesh Chakraborty, general secretary of West Bengal Government Engineering and Technical College Teachers’ Association.