Youths disqualified in Assam Police job tests protest

Guwahati, Jan 21 (PTI) A group of youths, who were disqualified in physical tests for the post of constables in the Assam Police, on Friday staged a protest in front of the force’s headquarters here.

They were detained, taken away from the site and released later, a senior official said.

The State Level Police Recruitment Board (SLPRB) on January 19 issued a notice announcing the results of Physical Standard Test (PST) and Physical Efficiency Test (PET) and asked the candidates to check their status on the website.

The director general of police, who is the chairman of the SLPRB, on Thursday issued another notice asking the qualified candidates to apply online for the Common Written Test by January 30 on the SLPRB website.

A section of the candidates who did not find their names among the qualified applicants demonstrated before the police headquarters alleging that the system was not transparent.

They also claimed that only two candidates have been allowed against one post for the written test, while the norm is to call five candidates for one post.

A senior police official said they were detained as the Assam Police headquarters at Ulubari area in Guwahati is a sensitive place from the security point of view and they were released later.

Meanwhile, DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta asserted that the PST and PET were conducted in a “clear and transparent” manner.

“There is no doubt that we conducted the test in a transparent and professional way. The results were declared as per methodologies followed by reputed national level competitive exams,” he told reporters.

Regarding calling candidates five times of the posts, Mahanta said they followed the practice by inviting candidates from different categories like general, OBC, SC, ST, former militants and special police officers.

“The total number of candidates may not look like five times due to many reasons like many cleared the cut-off in both armed and unarmed stream, many reserved category applicants got more marks than unreserved (UR) category and got absorbed in UR category, and lack of sufficient number of qualifiers in some categories,” he added.

A total of 1,80,622 candidates had applied for 9,171 posts of various types of constables such as armed, unarmed, home guards, former militants, radio communications and fire and emergency services.