BENGALURU : In an abrupt move, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) on Friday announced that it was cancelling recruitment to 174 posts for which exams had been conducted, and the marks list published nearly 18 months ago. In all, 39,330 aspirants had applied for these posts, and a section of them is now planning to take BMRCL to court over the issue.
The posts advertised were that of 21 Junior Engineers, 19 Section Engineers and 134 maintainers. On Friday morning, a note was posted on the BMRCL website under its Career section: “Due to administrative reasons, the recruitment to the above said posts in BMRCL stands cancelled. Examination fees paid by those applicants who have appeared for the qualification examination will be refunded.” The desire to bag a government job had made a huge umber of aspirants respond to the job notification on January 2, 2019.
The marks list for three exams conducted by the Karnataka Examination Authority.was made public on its website on May 31, 2019. There was no news after that, and aspirants had been repeatedly interacting with BMRCL officials and others to know when they would be recruited. Express had highlighted their plight on September 23.
The State government had on July 6 this year frozen direct recruitment to all new posts in the State for the ongoing financial year, as an economy measure due to the pandemic. One aspirant, who works as maintainer at a pharma company in Raichur, told TNIE, “The cancellation is a rude shock to me and thousands of others.
We are very upset since the news broke this morning. We were repeatedly told to wait for some time and we were hoping that due to the corona crisis, we may have to wait till March 31, 2021 to be recruited. We are going to challenge this in the High Court. We are looking at filing the petition on Monday (November 2).”Two cases could be filed, one by us and another by the Union, he added. A topper in the qualifying exam, “I am feeling really helpless. BMRCL was the first exam I took and cracked it too, I was very hopeful of working for them. Going to court against BMRCL is an option I am mulling.”