The Madras High Court has ordered an interim stay on the recruitments for 8,000 posts by the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board (TNUSRB) on a plea of 15 people seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the alleged malpractices in the selection process. The public will lose their confidence in the state if there was a fraud in every public service examination, said Justice N Anand Venkatesh, ordering the interim stay on petitions filed by R Anbarasan and 14 others.
The petitioners alleged malpractices in the recruitment conducted by the TNUSRB (Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board) in 2019 for the posts of grade-II constables, firemen and jail warden. Counsel for the petitioners said about 1,019 candidates have been selected from Vellore district alone and another 763 from exam centres in Villupuram.
All these candidates were declared to have secured over 72 marks in the exams and most of them selected were from Vellore Sigaram Tuition Centre, he claimed. The petitioners wanted the court to call for the records of the provisional list and quash it besides ordering a CBI probe into the alleged irregularities.
“Considering the allegations made in the affidavit, the court is of the considered view that the entire selection shall be kept in abeyance for a period of one week,” the judge said. Directing the respondents to file a counter, the judge adjourned the petitions to March.
The order comes after the Madras High Court last year advised the Centre, which framed the rules of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for students who wished to study medical courses, to take note of it after the infamous impersonation scam made it to the news.
The court has said instead of giving the expected good results, the test has only benefited students who spend lakhs of rupees on coaching classes and put students from the rural or poor financial backgrounds at a disadvantage.