Accepting submissions by the CBI giving a clean chit to the Southern Railway over the recruitment made in 2014, the Madras High Court Thursday closed a petition which alleged candidates from northern states were preferred
for certain posts over aspirants from Tamil Nadu.
Preliminary investigation into the allegations made by petitioner P Panneerselvam found no prima facie case for further probe, the CBI submitted before Justice A D Jagadish Chandira.
Panneerselvam was one of the candidates who did not clear the examination.
In all, 16, 94,729 applications were received for the recruitment out of which 11,25,405 were found to be eligible, Counsel for Railways P T Ramkumar told the court.
This included 3,13,821 applications from Tamil Nadu of which 2,17,556 were found eligible. However, only 30 per cent of the Tamil Nadu applicants attended the exam, he said.
Of the 12,265 selected, a total of 7,598 were from southern states, 3,096 from eastern, 1,099 from western, 448 from northern and 24 from central states, he said.
He further submitted that the petitioner had scored only 4.33 out of 100 in the exam.
Recording the submissions, Justice Chandira closed the petition.
The petitioner had alleged railway authorities, particularly from the northern states, hampered the recruitment process for posts like helper, peon, sanitary worker, trackman by recruiting non-Tamil speaking candidates from the north.
To facilitate appointment of non-Tamil speaking candidates, the authorities had systematically rejected lakhs of applications made by Tamil candidates on flimsy reasons like lack of self-attestation, he had claimed.
The petitioner wanted the court to order a CBI probe into the matter.
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