Rattled by the multi-crore job scam involving its officials, railways have decided to curtail the powers of chairmen of Railway Recruitment Boards and adopt "checks and balances" in the examinations procedure to prevent leakage of question papers.
"We have given too much of responsibility to the chairman. The Chairman should not have so much access to everything and therefore we are putting in necessary checks and balance in the examination system to prevent leakage of question papers in future," Railway Board chairman Vivek Sahai said today, adding the necessary steps will be taken "very soon."
The CBI had on June 19 claimed to have unearthed a multi-crore Railway recruitment scam and had arrested eight persons, including Vivek Bhardwaj Sharma, son of SM Sharma, chairman of RRB Mumbai who was later suspended, AK Jagannatham, the then ADRM in Raipur and his son Srujan for allegedly leaking exam papers for money.
"Our dependence on one person (chairman) of RRB for conducting the examinations was to be rectified. Who knew that
the very person (RRB chairman) entrusted with the conduct of
the examination would turn out to be a traitor," he said indicating harsher punishment for Sharma pending CBI inquiry.
Railways are also mulling changing the selection procedure for question papers. Currently each RRB is preparing its own set of questions.
As per the new system under consideration, question papers will be selected on random basis to make it more transparent.
Leakages in one centres will have no impact on other centres as the students will be provided multiple set of questions, Sahai said.
Sharma and other 20 RRB chairmen were handpicked by railway minister Mamata Banerjee based on their performances and level of efficiency for the post. There are total 21 RRBs in the country.
Regretting the incident which has stalled the recruitment process in railways, Sahai said "we are sad that such a thing happened. We are taking steps to prevent it."
Railways which had vacancies of about two lakh posts had started the recruitment exercise of filling about 40,000 posts in phases.
Railways are conducting internal audit to find out loopholes in the examination system.
