Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar
Justice Arun Pednekar of the Vacation Bench at the Aurangabad Division of the Bombay High Court has granted permission to include the Board of Directors of Ahmednagar District Central Cooperative Bank and Workwell Infotech Pvt. Ltd. as respondents in a petition alleging irregularities in the bank’s recent employee recruitment process. The court has also directed that notices be issued to both entities.
The Ahmednagar District Central Cooperative Bank had announced recruitment for 690 clerk posts, with Workwell Infotech Pvt. Ltd. appointed to conduct the entire selection process.
Petition highlights alleged Misconduct
The petition arose after the release of the final list of selected candidates following an online examination and interviews. Petitioners Vishal Gore and Rajendra Vairal from Velapur (Kopargaon taluka) raised concerns over discrepancies in their scores, noting that their answer sheets reflected better performance than indicated by their final results. Despite repeated requests, the bank’s executive committee refused to provide copies of their answer sheets. The petitioners also approached Cooperative Minister Babasaheb Patil with their grievances, but no remedial action was taken, prompting them to file the petition through Advocates Nilesh Bhagwat and Yogesh Khalkar.
Allegations of procedural violations
The petition claims the recruitment process was marred by serious irregularities. Instead of releasing a merit list as mandated, the bank published only seat numbers along with interview and final selection lists. The bank’s chairman and board members allegedly favored certain candidates by assigning them higher interview marks, effectively selecting predetermined individuals with close ties to the board. Furthermore, the petition asserts that reservation policies were ignored and state-level Task Force guidelines for cooperative bank recruitments were not followed. The petitioners demand that the entire recruitment process be declared illegal and that the selections be annulled. The government was represented by Assistant Government Pleader S. P. Sonpawale during the proceedings.