Telangana: Multiple government job winners expose serious system flaw

The situation, where one person manages to bag multiple jobs and selects one of his or her choice, has an unseen outcome – that of several others not getting a chance to bag the jobs that this person rejects

Hyderabad/Sangareddy: The sudden reportage of multiple incidents of one person bagging more than one government job is being viewed with amusement by many, but with most not knowing that this has some serious impact for several hundreds of other job aspirants.

The situation, where one person manages to bag multiple jobs and selects one of his or her choice, has an unseen outcome – that of several others not getting a chance to bag the jobs that this person rejects. This is due to a serious flaw in the system, where the rejected job is not given to the person next in line on account of merit.

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This flaw in the process for recruitment into residential Schools and colleges and their selection conducted by the Telangana Residential Educational Institutions Recruitment Board (TREI-RB) has already been pointed out by many, with former IPS officer and BSP State president RS Praveen Kumar having repeatedly pointing out and asking the government to rectify the anomaly.

In fact, Praveen Kumar had pointed this out on X last month, tagging Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy as well. The Chief Minister had responded to his tweet, saying that officials would be directed to look into the issue.

“Regarding the recruitment of teachers, we will direct the concerned authorities to look into the issues raised by you and the instructions given and resolve the issue expeditiously,” Revanth Reddy had replied.

However, nothing much has happened till date, with more reports of one person securing multiple jobs continuing to be reported.

Praveen Kumar, in his post, had pointed out critical issues in the TREI-RB recruitment process, after the Board advertised for about 9200 posts in 2023.

The starting point was that every eligible candidate could apply for multiple jobs.

“If a person is eligible for PGT and Degree Lecturer, and if he/she is selected for both, she/he would naturally opt for Degree Lecturer as it has better pay and perks. If the same person is selected for both the PGT and DL in the same recruitment in the same cycle, when she prefers DL, PGT falls vacant. Common sense says that the next meritorious candidate in PGT list should get the opportunity. Unfortunately this has not been happening,” he said, adding that as a result, hundreds of posts in the lower ranks were falling vacant with candidates being forced to wait for another recruitment cycle which might take years.

“Earlier there used to be Relinquishment Option for the candidates which would have facilitated the upward mobility of meritorious candidates within the same recruitment cycle. What happens in this is a candidate gives an undertaking that in case if he/she is selected for two jobs, he/ she would keep the best among both and his/her candidature for the other job need not be considered. This Relinquishment Option has been done away with for some unknown reasons,” he said.

The former IPS officer went on to request the Chief Minister hand over posting orders in ‘descending’ manner in TREIRB.

“This might take little more time, but will leave smiles on thousands of families. Kindly introduce Relinquishment Option again by an executive order. Please avoid backlog vacancies,” he added.

Meanwhile, candidates who could not bag jobs are a disappointed lot.

Take the case of Anjiram, a native of the Kamareddy district, who said he was selected in a 1:2 ratio for the trained graduate teacher (TGT) test after clearing the written examination. However, he could not make it to the final list. At the same time, several others who made it to the final lists of TGT, later got jobs as degree lecturer or junior lecturer or postgraduate teacher and moved on.

“If the names of those who got other jobs are removed from the list, those lower in the list will get jobs,” Anjiram said.

Several others like Anjiram who lost out on the jobs because of the existing anomaly are now preparing to launch a protest if the government fails to come up with a solution.