CBI instruction sought over Southern Railway jobs scam

CHENNAI: Noticing that there might be a scam in the recruitment of Group D officers and helpers in 2013 by giving preference to North Indians and rejecting the applications of Tamil candidates in the Southern Railway (SR), the Madras High Court on Thursday sought the CBI for instructions in the issue by citing the postal exam scam that took place in 2017.

The allegation is that the SR authorities from the northern states have hampered the recruitment process for the posts like helper, peon, sanitary worker, trackman and gang man, for which knowledge of Tamil is mandatory and have recruited non-Tamil speaking north Indian candidates.

The petitioner wanted the court to order a CBI probe into the alleged scam and the counsel for CBI submitted that the agency is yet to receive the representation made by the petitioner and sought time to get instructions from the CBI authorities concerned.

Justice M Dhandapani adjourned the plea by a week and noted that the allegation is similar to that of the 2016 postal recruitment scam in which candidates from Haryana, Maharashtra and Punjab scored higher marks in Tamil exam when compared to Tamil candidates.

“There is something serious in this. Such type of discrimination cannot be done against a particular State alone. If such things are done by authorities from Tamil Nadu, it would have been made a national issue. They would have been called anti-nationals,” Justice Dhandapani said.

According to the petitioner, on September 21, 2013, the railway recruitment cell, Chennai, issued a notification calling for applications from eligible candidates for Group D posts. The candidate was also one of the applicants.

A year after the notification, exams were conducted for the posts on several days between November 2 to November 30, 2014. They were held under mysterious circumstances as even the hall tickets were issued without photographs of candidates, the petitioner claimed.