NOT QUITE ABOVE BOARD

Multiple developments in the past year have cast a long shadow over recruitment drives being conducted in Jammu and Kashmir.

- Moazum Mohammad

If first as many as three selection lists-of police sub-inspectors, junior engineers and finance accounts assistants-were scrapped amid allegations ranging from corruption to cheating to paper leaks, the administration courted another controversy after it hired a "tainted" external agency to conduct the examinations afresh, spurring protests by both aspirants and the Opposition in the fledgling Union Territory.

The issue surfaced last September when the recruiting agency, the J&K Service Selection Board (JKSSB), floated tenders to conduct computer-based tests to fill non-gazetted posts, including those cancelled a month prior. Starting the process afresh, the official documents show, the JKSSB issued a corrigendum on September 14 after holding a pre-bid meeting with the prospective firms and amended the initial criteria, allowing companies that were previously blacklisted or barred to participate in the bidding process. Aptech Limited, a Mumbai-based firm, was awarded the contract in November, raising hackles-for it had come under the lens for examinations conducted in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Assam.

In fact, the UP power corporation had blacklisted Aptech for three years from May 2019 to May 2022 for allegedly facilitating cheating, which had led to the cancellation of the selection list of junior engineers in 2018. Then, in 2021, the Delhi High Court slapped a Rs 10 lakh penalty on it for "malpractice at an institutional level" after it filed a "misleading" self-declaration while bidding for a tender floated by the Centre's directorate general of training.