Ranchi: Around 2,700 candidates who recently secured government positions through state recruitment examinations staged a large-scale demonstration outside the Jharkhand Secretariat on Thursday. The protesters demanded the immediate rollback of official notifications that cancelled 22 recruitment examinations and ordered investigations into 23 others following widespread allegations of procedural irregularities.
The demonstrators, including nearly 2,000 individuals recruited through the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission Combined Graduate Level examination, maintained that they secured their appointments fairly based on individual merit. Several affected personnel, many of whom had already assumed duties across key government departments such as finance, home, labour, road transport, and public relations, argued that wholesale cancellations penalize innocent appointees rather than targeting specific wrongdoers.
The state government’s decision to scrap the examinations came in response to a 25-day agitation by student groups demanding structural reforms and investigations into outsourced testing agencies. While the agitating student organizations agreed to suspend their primary demonstration after the announcement, the newly appointed personnel have moved the Jharkhand High Court to legally challenge the cancellation orders, warning that their protests will persist until their appointments are safeguarded.