Ahmedabad: A major recruitment scandal has come to light in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), where marks of three failed candidates were tampered with, leading to their appointment as Class 2 technical supervisors. Two among the candidates in the exam conducted by Gujarat University (GU) are women.
A whistleblower’s complaint to municipal commissioner M Thennarasan led to the shocking discovery.Subsequent investigation revealed that head clerk Pulkit Sathwara, posted at AMC’s central office, had allegedly tweaked the marksheets of candidates Jay Ashok Patel, Monal Limbachiya and Tamannakumari Patel, thus manipulating their selection from a pool of 10,189 applicants for 93 positions in the civic body’s engineering department.
The recruitment process for the posts, which commenced in April 2024, witnessed multiple revisions to the answer key following objections from several candidates and Gujarat high court’s intervention. Final appointments were made on Oct 9, 2024, but discrepancies emerged while comparing the Gujarat University-provided results with the selection list.
At a press conference at AMC’s Danapith headquarters on Tuesday, deputy municipal commissioner Arjav Shah shared details of the scam. For the 93 vacancies for the post of Class 2 technical supervisors, AMC had invited online applications with April 19, 2024 as the deadline. Of the 12,377 applications received, 10,189 were deemed valid and 5,955 candidates took the written exam on Aug 18.
Shah said the answer key was published on the same day, as per protocol, open for changes in case of objections.
GU resolved the objections raised and re-released the answer key. A candidate raised objection to this version as well, taking the matter to the Gujarat high court. The revised answer key released after this was the final one, based on which a selection list of 93 candidates was prepared on Oct 5. Shah added, it was during this trial period that an applicant lodged a complaint with the municipal commissioner, alleging tampering with marksheets to wrongly appoint certain candidates.
Preliminary AMC investigations revealed that marks in the results were different from GU’s version. Further verification showed that Jay, Monal and Tamannakumari had scored marks lower than shown in the selection list.
Sathwara was suspended and the appointments of the supervisors were cancelled on Dec 27 and a departmental inquiry initiated, said Shah.
The positions left vacant by the supervisors’ removal have been filled from the waiting list.
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