Picture used for representational purpose only

CHENNAI: Noting that a plea alleging a recruitment scam in Southern Railway is likely to open a pandora’s box for the zone, the Madras high court on Thursday said the matter must be probed seriously as, if proved, it would be a clear discrimination against candidates from Tamil Nadu .

The petition filed by P Panner Selvam alleged that some Southern Railway officials, particularly from northern states, were, even for posts like helper, peon, sanitary worker, trackman, mali , and gangman that required knowledge of Tamil, roping in non-Tamil speaking north Indian candidates. The authorities systematically rejected lakhs of applications from Tamil candidates for flimsy reasons like lack of self-attestation, it said, urging the court to order a CBI probe into the matter.

When the plea came up for hearing, counsel for CBI submitted that the agency was yet to receive the petitioner’s representation and sought time to get instructions from the CBI authorities concerned.

Recording the submission, Justice M Dhandapani adjourned the plea by a week. Noting that the alleged scam was similar to the 2016 postal recruitment fraud in which candidates from Haryana, Maharashtra and Punjab scored higher marks in Tamil exam when compared to Tamil candidates, he said, “There is something serious in this. Such type of discrimination cannot be done against a particular state alone. If such things are done by authorities from Tamil Nadu, it would have been made a national issue.”

According to the petitioner, on September 21, 2013, the railway recruitment cell, Chennai issued a notification calling for applications from eligible candidates for Group D posts. The candidate was one among the applicants. A year after the notification, exams were held for the postsbetween November 2 and 30, 2014. Claiming that the exams were conducted under mysterious circumstance with even hall tickets lacking photographs of candidates, the petitioner complained to the CBI. “Such scam has been carried out not only for Grade D posts but also those under under Grade A in collusion with railway officials,” advocate T Sundaravadanam added.

