The Madras High Court on Monday, April 28, said the fabrication of marks of meritorious candidates in the ‘cash-for-jobs’ scam was a ‘well-executed master plan that enabled scientific corruption’.
A bench of Justices R Subramanian and G Arul Murugan reserved orders on appeals filed in the alleged corruption in the appointment of junior engineers (JEs) in the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) during V Senthil Balaji’s tenure as transport minister in the AIADMK government in 2015.
“We are seeing an attempt is made to either delay the proceedings or to hijack this case from this bench,” the judges said, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
The court made the remarks while hearing the writ appeals filed by A Nambi Venkatesh and others, whose marks were allegedly “lowered” to favour less meritorious candidates, challenging the order of a single judge.
They filed a writ petition in 2021 seeking to quash the selection orders issued for appointing 33 junior engineers (JE) and 63 assistant engineers (AEs) in 2015. The single judge (Justice Vivek Kumar Singh), in his order dated December 13, 2024, refused to quash the selection order and, instead, directed the MTC to make a “fresh consideration” of grievances of the petitioners. Advocate N Subramaniyan, arguing the appeals, submitted that 33 JEs were appointed against the actual notification of 13, while 63 AEs were appointed against the notified 40 vacancies in violation of norms.
He told the bench that the marks of successful candidates were fabricated by lowering the marks they scored through weightage marks including the academic marks and the interview, thereby denying them their rightful job.
Referring to the fabrication of marks while making entry in the personnel register from the interview register, the bench said, "It is a well-executed master plan enabling scientific corruption."
It termed the way the high score of the meritorious candidates was lowered and low scorers were awarded high marks as a "mathematical gimmick".
Comparing the scam in West Bengal in the case of appointment of teachers, the bench said the "entire selection was rigged" there, but here, the process was fair but "final selection was wrongly arrived at".
Pointing to the adherence to reservation norms in the appointments, the bench said there was a "breach of communal roster" as Scheduled Caste candidates were selected for three posts instead of six as per the reservation, according to the report by The New Indian Express.
The bench also slammed MTC officials and law officers connected for trying to delay the court proceedings.
It may be noted that a criminal case was also being heard by a special court for MP/MLA cases, based on the FIRs registered by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Greater Chennai Police. Senthil Balaji is an accused in the criminal case. Following the trails of this criminal case, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had registered a money laundering case under PMLA against him and arrested him. He was incarcerated for about a year and was granted bail by the Supreme Court. He had to resign from the post of minister following an option offered by the Supreme Court whether he wanted to continue as a minister or remain enlarged on bail.
