Multiple allegations are emerging in the Patwari recruitment test conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Employees’ Selection Board (ESB) in March-April this year. Now, details of four candidates who cleared the test in handicapped category but appeared in another recruitment test by ESB (for posts of forest guards/prison guards) as ‘fit’, are making rounds on social media.
Former president of the Madhya Pradesh Congress, Arun Yadav on Monday tweeted four images – showing what are claimed as the results of the Patwari recruitment test and admit cards of the forest guards’ recruitment tests (conducted in June 2023) of the same candidates. In the Patwari test, these candidates are shown under handicapped quota, while in forest guards test admit cards, no such quota has been claimed by the candidates, probably because forest/jail guards need to be physically fit.
Yadav, who brought the alleged Patwari scam into the open, asked in the tweet “how have the candidates who were handicapped during Patwari recruitment test become fit during the jail guards test? What kind of experiment is this?”
Also, a list of about 16 candidates from Jaura in Morena, along with documents claimed to be copies of their results are circulating on the social media showing that they have the same surnames, come from the same place and are all in handicapped category. Two of these candidates even have the same name as their father, so they are apparently brothers, but their age difference is just five days and they both cleared the test in hearing impaired (handicapped quota).
In another case, documents have emerged to claim a 19-year-old candidate passed the Patwari recruitment test and was given the benefit of five years of service as contract employee, which would mean that he started working at the age of maximum 14 years.
Citing all these documents, the National Educated Youth Union (NEYU), which is spearheading protests against the tests demanding CBI probe into the issue and quick completion of the probe, has said that evidence after evidence is emerging on alleged scam in the recruitment test, but the government is yet to announce the CBI probe as demanded.
Meanwhile on Monday, a video of a girl, claiming that she was among the toppers of the Patwari recruitment test and had taken up the offer to pay Rs 15 lakhs to get selected made rounds on the social media. Tweeting the video along with the claimed result copy of the candidate, the media department head of MP Congress, K.K Mishra said that if the video was true and she has given Rs 15 lakhs for her selection, it is a serious matter to be investigated at high level and also security should be provided to the girl.
BJP spokesman Narendra Saluja, who slammed the Congress for circulating the fake video while claiming that the girl in video did not match the photograph in the result of the candidate, tweeted another video of the girl after two hours. In this new video, the girl claimed that she was not the reported candidate and had made the video just as a joke and shared it with her friends, who might have circulated it on social media. She asked all social media users to take down the video and warned that she would file a police case against those using the video.
Saluja said, “The girl in the video has herself clarified the situation. The BJP had immediately called the earlier video as fake. This is how Congress spreads lies and confusion.”
In Bhopal, a group of candidates selected through the recruitment test held a demonstration demanding that they should be given posting as they had been selected fairly and the probe could continue simultaneously.
The Patwari recruitment scam allegations came up last week when the MP Congress pointed out that seven of the top 10 candidates selected were from the same exam centre – the NRI College of Engineering and Management, Gwalior. The college is owned by MLA Sanjeev Singh Kushwaha – who was elected from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) but crossed over to the ruling BJP last year.
While sharing the result sheets and admit cards of the top 10 students, Congress also pointed out other discrepancies like five of these toppers wrote their names in Hindi as signatures. Congress said that it is rare for educated youth of today to sign in Hindi that too writing plain names and some of these toppers have got full or very high marks in English. The Congress demanded a CBI probe into the test.
On July 13, after a huge protest of youths across the state under the banner of NEYU, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced deferment of the recruitment process until the results under question from the one centre were re-examined. There has been no other announcement on the part of the government as yet.
