Most of the political parties in Kashmir have criticised the Union Territory administration’s decision of scrapping the recruitment process of Jammu and Kashmir Bank and demanded immediate rollback of the order. It may be recalled here that the Jammu and Kashmir administration, the other day, scrapped the recruitment process of 250 probationary officers and 1,200 banking associates that started in 2018 due to various “legal infirmities” and announced fresh recruitment on fast-track basis through the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS). The administration claims that its decision would make the process more transparent and time bound. The administration may have a point but it goes without saying that if there were some ‘legal infirmities’ in Bank’s recruitment process, why should the poor candidates pay for that. Undue delay in the whole process has already put scores of aspirants and their families through trepidation. The recruitment process was going on for the last almost two years. The three-phase examination was conducted during (former) Governor S P Malik’s tenure, with thousands of qualified aspirants from all the regions of Jammu and Kashmir participating in it.
Now that political parties like NC, PDP and CPI(M) have raised questions about the scrapping of the process and highlighting the trauma of the applicants, it is responsibility of the UT administration to come clean over the issue. The process was started and ended during then Governor’s rule and thus any political interference is ruled out. If there are some legal infirmities, why should not the administration make these public so that everybody come to know who has been doing what. As NC rightly pointed out, the administration’s decision has come as a shock to the thousands of aspirants and their families. Instead of quashing the whole process, th authorities should have ironed out the descriptiveness keeping in view that youth of J&K are already going through tough times following dire unemployment and this move has every potential to push them to the wall. It is therefore expected that the authorities find a way out and while taking steps to deal with ‘legal infirmities’ ensure that the aspirants are not made to suffer.
