Teachers Recruitment Board cancels exam for teachers

CHENNAI: The Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) on Friday has cancelled the polytechnic lecturers’ exam following the recruitment scam in which nearly 200 candidates got qualified in the written exam with fake marks. In an expose on December 13, Deccan Chronicle carried exclusive reports on the scam. The reports had sent shock waves among the candidates and the public. The police have launched a detailed investigation after receiving a complaint from TRB. The police have arrested 7 persons in connection with the scam and one person surrendered in the court.

The new notification for examination will be issued during the first week of May and examination will be conducted during the first week of August 2018,” TRB chairman K. Srinivasan said in a release. “The candidates who already applied for the exam have to apply again. But, they need not pay the exam fees and new candidates can also apply for the exams,”  he added. TRB has published the results of polytechnic lecturers recruitment exam and also the list of candidates qualified for the certificate verification on November 7, 2017.

A few candidates had sent complaints to the Chief Minister’s Cell and TRB hinting a recruitment racket. Alerted by the petitions, TRB has launched a detailed internal enquiry and verified the marks of the candidates selected for certificate verification with their original OMR answer sheets. It was revealed that of 2,000 candidates who were called for certificate verification, around 200 candidates had qualified with fake marks in the written exam. Their original marks were inflated from 50 to 100 marks to make them eligible for certificate verification.

Each candidate allegedly has paid Rs 25 lakh to Rs 30 lakh to the touts. After the scam reports published by the Deccan Chronicle, the Teachers Recruitment Board has filed a police complaint against 155 persons. The probe by the police found that employees of a private company which was contracted for scanning the OMR answer sheets had tampered the results by inflating the marks for the candidates who paid the bribe to racketeers. The issue was closely followed by other media as well. The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court is also taken up the issue as the suo-moto case on January 30. TRB has conducted written exam for 1,058 lecturer posts in Government Polytechnic Colleges on September 16 last year and 1.33 lakh candidates wrote the exam.