Court issues notice to SBI on Clerk recruitment 2016

State Bank of India (SBI) has conducted the Preliminary Examination for the post of Junior Associates (JA) (Customer Support and Sales) and Junior Agriculture Associates (JAA) in the last week of May. SBI conducts this examination every year. Approximately 25+ lakh candidates have applied for the posts this year. When the recruitment notification was declared, an important change was added in it. As per SBI Clerk notification 2016,‘Candidates with record of default in repayment of loans/Credit card dues and/ or against whose name adverse report of CIBIL or other external agencies are not eligible to apply for the post.’

On May 25, a PIL filled by S Gurukrishna Gokul, an aspirant in Madras high court against State Bank of India citing the above condition. This condition will prevent a large number of economically & socially backward candidates from applying for the posts. If they were selected in SBI, they would be able repay the loans, he argued.

The bench comprising of Justices R Mahadevan & SS Sundar have issued notices to the SBI chariman & central government asking them to reply within 2 weeks, on the petition seeking to cancel the clerk recruitment & issue a fresh notification. Since the court has given two weeks time to explain their stand, what the Central government & SBI have to say on this PIL is yet to be seen.