HYDERABAD: Claiming that there have been irregularities in the recruitment of police constables and sub inspectors, the Congress party on Saturday demanded a high-level probe into all recruitment drives and for the examinations to be conducted again. Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan, AICC spokesperson Sravan Dasoju said that the Telangana State Level Police Recruitment Board (TSLPRB) issued five separate notifications for recruitment of 18,435 constables and sub-inspectors.
It also collected an application fee of over Rs 1,000 from 7,19,840 job aspirants. However, the Board failed to conduct recruitment tests in a scientific and fool-proof manner. A total of 2,24,741 students appeared for Physical Measurement Test and Physical Efficiency Test conducted by the board and 1,17,660 have qualified. However, he said, neither any format was fixed, nor were any precedents followed for the test.
“For the first time, the Board used Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags for physical fitness tests as part of the recruitment for stipendiary police constable and sub-inspector posts. The RFID works were assigned to a private agency eSoft,” Sravan said. The AICC spokesperson claimed that the discrepancies in use of RFID tags deprived thousands of jobless youth an opportunity to get police jobs. As against five separate notifications for different posts, physical tests were jointly conducted for all the aspirants and posts without even taking into consideration the gap between average age of applicants for SI and Constable posts.
“There were huge flaws in the conduct of 800 metres (400 x 2) race, with a qualifying time of 170 seconds. As against the norms of having only 4-6 members on the track, 50-60 candidates were made to run on the track at the same time. Consequently, the candidates were unable to run freely on the over-crowded track and were slowed down,” he said.