The Pratibandhi Surksha Sangstha, Assam, on Thursday demanded the immediate removal of state-level Police Recruitment Board chairman Pradeep Kumar allegedly for his involvement in financial anomalies in connection with the recruitment of 352 grade III posts lying vacant in 31 departments.

A charge, which Kumar denied, stating that recruitment was “based on merit”.

Sangstha general secretary Nripen Malakar said the examination conducted recently to fill up 352 grade III posts lying vacant in various departments of the state was quite unfair. “We realised anomalies in the examination process,” Malakar said.

Notably, due to lack of manpower and infrastructure, the state-level Police Recruitment Board offers the bid to conduct examinations for recruitment in various departments to private agencies.

“The private firms, who conduct the examinations, are neither sincere nor can be trusted. There is a great nexus between the board officials and the private agencies, who were altogether involved in financial anomalies while conducting the examination,” Malakar said.

According to Malakar, on December 7, a delegate of the Sangstha met chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal at Janata Bhawan and submitted a number of documents, audio clippings and other evidences highlighting the financial anomalies in connection with the recruitment process.

“Instantly, the chief minister issued an order to restrict Kumar from being a part of the recruitment process further. However, Kumar has been handling the whole recruitment process along with his loyal officers till date. The chief minister also asked the additional chief secretary to probe the allegations. However, nothing has come up even after a month,” Malakar said.

He also criticised the state’s irrigation department for not maintaining the prescribed reservation of 4 per cent according to the Right to Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, in its recent advertisement for filling 643 posts.

However, Kumar said, “I challenge the Sangstha members to produce evidence if I ever indulged in unfair means while conducting the examination. Their concern is to how to get their organisation members recruited. But we cannot do this. The examination was conducted on OMR (optical mark reading) sheets. Therefore, the candidates were selected based on merit.”

Alleging that the Sangstha leaders promised to secure jobs to their members, Kumar said, “I head a government board, not a social organisation. Therefore, my job is not to pick up candidates based on extraneous demand. Merit only will be the criteria for recruitment.”