Three weeks ago, the Tamil Nadu Teachers Recruitment Board (TN TRB) released fresh notification for recruitment to the post of lecturers in government polytechnic colleges and special institutions. The TN TRB polytechnic lecturer recruitment 2019 is going to be organized for a total of 1060 vacancies in the Tamil Nadu Educational Service.
Recent reports suggest that a review petition has been filed against the cancellation of the 2017-2018 recruitment process. It is being speculated that this is causing a delay in TRB releasing the recruitment’s application form.
TN TRB polytechnic lecturer recruitment 2019 notification, the notification no. 14/2019 contains all the details of the recruitment except dates. The notice does not specify date from which application forms will be available. It was expected that application form will be available at trb.tn.nic.in by the end of December.
That this recruitment is in fact filling vacancies of the year 2017-2018 is made clear by the opening lines of the notification that says, “As per Judgment of Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, New Delhi made in SLP (C) Nos.14206-14217 of 2019 dated 08.08.2019 fresh notification is issued calling for application for the post of Lecturers in Government Polytechnic Colleges (Engineering / Non- Engineering) for the year 2017- 2018.”
In 2017-2018, the board had invited applications for the same position, though for slightly fewer vacancies, 1058. Records show that 1,70,366 had applied for the exam and 1,33,567 appeared in it. In that year the exam was pen and paper based.
Soon after the exam, scanned copies of candidates’ OMR sheets had been sent to a company in New Delhi for evaluation and preparation of the final list. The process was completed, and the results were announced on November 7 in the year 2017. It was then that the Prime Minister’s office and the board received a complaint alleging malpractices in the exam. Which led to several enquiries and it was ultimately discovered that for exactly 196 candidates, marks were altered.
The said 196 candidates had their marks increased through the agency involved in evaluating the papers, and due course of action was taken. However as a result of the findings, TRB decided to cancel the recruitment.
In the multiple reports that followed, candidates expressed different reactions. Some were happy that perpetrators of crime could not get the coveted lecturer position through the process. Some were concerned over how the board would conduct the next exam and what steps would be taken to ensure that such cases do not arise again. And some, who had been declared qualified in the exam and only had to go through the document verification to get the job, were unhappy that despite being so close to getting a job the opportunity slipped away.
If the recent reports are true, then the battle in court is still ongoing. The challenging parties have reportedly asked to not cancel the previous recruitment and only segregate those who had indulged in malpractices. However it may be recalled that the same was debated last time also in court, and a single judge had upheld the decision to cancel the recruitment as monetary transaction was made to tamper results, and the hard disk containing results was tampered thus making it difficult to segregate only those involved.
