An audit by India’s national watchdog has raised pointed questions about how merit, records, and rules were applied in a key recruitment exercise at a state-owned bank—revealing score disparities and missing documentation that complicate an already sensitive public hiring process
A Recruitment Under the Auditor’s Lens
In a performance audit for the year ending March 2023, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India turned its attention to a recruitment drive conducted by the State Bank of Sikkim for Assistant Manager posts. The hiring process originated with an advertisement issued on May 25, 2021. Against 26 vacancies, the bank received 3,513 applications, with 2,270 candidates appearing for the written examination. From that pool, 69 were shortlisted for interviews, and 26 were ultimately selected in February 2022.
The audit does not allege criminal wrongdoing. Instead, it assembles a series of procedural gaps and inconsistencies—some technical, others substantive—that together, auditors say, raise questions about fairness, transparency, and adherence to established norms in public recruitment.
Disparities in Scores, Disquiet in Selection
At the center of the audit’s findings is a pattern of outcomes that appears to defy conventional expectations of merit-based selection. One example cited is that of Ugen Tenzing Bhutia, who scored 128 marks in the written examination but was not selected. The bank did not furnish his interview marks to auditors. By contrast, Manu Gautam, who secured 26 marks in the written test, was selected as an Assistant Manager.
The audit notes similar cases: candidates such as Sandhya Pradhan (106 marks), Shreya Gautam (100), and Suraj Basnet (98) were not selected, while others with written scores of 74, 35, and even 28 made the final list. According to the auditors, candidates scoring between 26 and 42 were selected in certain categories, while others with scores ranging from 55 to 128—within the same reservation brackets—were not even called for interviews. In some instances, the difference in marks exceeded 25.
Rules, Ratios, and the Reservation Roster
Beyond individual cases, the audit points to systemic departures from prescribed procedures. Auditors flagged the lack of section-wise qualifying marks, deviations from interview shortlisting ratios, and inconsistencies in applying the reservation roster. Such mechanisms are designed to standardize selection and ensure equity across categories; when they are unevenly applied, auditors note, outcomes become difficult to justify or defend.
The report also underscores that interview marks—a crucial component in composite scoring—were not consistently made available for verification. Without these figures, it becomes challenging to assess how candidates with widely divergent written scores converged at the point of final selection.
Missing Records and the Problem of Accountability
Perhaps most troubling to auditors was the absence of basic recruitment records. Evaluation sheets, cut-off marks, interview panel details, and attendance registers were not fully produced. In one instance, a selected candidate’s answer sheet reportedly lacked the signatures of both the candidate and the invigilator—an omission that, while not determinative on its own, signals weaknesses in examination controls.
Taken together, the audit’s findings sketch a recruitment process marked by gaps in documentation and clarity. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India stops short of prescribing remedies in its narrative but emphasizes that transparent record-keeping and consistent application of rules are essential to sustaining public confidence—particularly when competition for a small number of public-sector jobs is intense.
