Chandigarh: The Congress — which has been attacking the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab over an alleged scam in the recruitment of naib tehsildars (revenue officers) — has now highlighted another “scam”. This time, it’s about the conduct of an examination for the promotion of kanungos (revenue clerks) to naib tehsildars.
The written examination, conducted by the state revenue department, has come under a cloud after senior Congress leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira Sunday alleged “gross manipulation and corruption” in the examination process and demanded a vigilance inquiry into the matter.
ThePrint reached Punjab revenue minister Brahm Shankar Sharma and financial commissioner (revenue) K.A.P. Sinha through telephone calls and messages, but has not received responses. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
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The examination and Congress’s allegations
More than 400 kanungos sat the exam for promotion to naib tehsildar in October last year. There are eight papers in total, all of which kanungos must pass in order to be promoted. The results were declared in March, with candidates who’d failed being allowed to apply for revaluation within the following month. The revaluation results were declared in June, with 67 out of 120 applicants passing.
In a series of tweets, sharing the results of the revaluation process, Khaira, the MLA for Bholath, has alleged that candidates who applied for revaluation and wanted to be promoted had paid Rs 1 lakh per paper to the revenue department.
In particular, the Congress leader — who was with AAP from 2015 to 2018 and served as leader of the opposition in 2017-18 — has asked chief minister Bhagwant Mann to probe how out of 64 applicants who had failed the Urdu paper, 43 were declared to have passed the exam after the revaluation.
Speaking to ThePrint, Khaira said, “First of all, the fact that out of 120 kanungos who had failed the written examination, 67 managed to pass it after revaluation. This poses serious questions about the manner in which the original examination was conducted and its result. Normally, the pass percentage of any examination changes by only one or two per cent following revaluation. But in this case, more than 50 per cent of the candidates were revaluated in a manner that helped them pass the exam that they had failed.”
“Revaluation can only make a little difference or lead to an increase in a few marks, but in this case it changed the entire result. In some cases, the marks of the candidates actually doubled. The most interesting part was that the maximum number of kanungos who had failed in the Urdu subject passed after the revaluation. Does that mean that the original checking of the Urdu subject answer sheets was so bad that 43 of the 64 kanungos who applied for a revaluation in the Urdu exam got enough marks to be declared as passed,” he added.
Khaira further claimed he’d been told that candidates gave senior officials in the revenue department Rs 1 lakh per subject to help them pass the exam using the revaluation route. “Since there was now a cloud over the revaluation results, the 43 candidates who had managed to clear the Urdu examination should be asked to read and write in Urdu to check if they really know the language.”
(Edited by Anumeha Saxena)
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