High Court halts Janata Bank job test results after question leaks

The High Court has frozen for three months the results of a written test for the recruitment of 834 senior officers at Janata Bank following allegations of question leaks.

In the order passed on Monday, judges also asked the state-run bank to refrain from recruiting anyone to the posts for the same period.

On Apr 21, the latest batch of jobseekers attended the two-hour written test at the capital’s Eden College, Lalmatia Women’s College and Ideal College.

Fifteen of them filed a writ petition on which the High Court issued the order on Monday.

Barrister Jyotirmoy Barua argued for the petitioners while Deputy Attorney General SM Moniruzzaman represented the state.

The court also issued a rule asking why the “inaction” of the defendants to scrap the results and to start an inquiry into the alleged question paper leaks should not be declared illegal, said Barrister Barua.

Finance Secretary, Bangladesh Bank governor, Bankers’ Selection Committee, Dhaka University vice-chancellor, Janata Bank managing director and dean of Faculty of Social Science, Dhaka University have been made the respondents.

Bankers’ Selection Committee published the job circular for the posts in March 2016.

The allegations of question leaks are not true, said Professor Farid Uddin Ahmed, Dean of the Faculty of Social Science, DU, who supervised the tests.

Some 10,150 aspirants cleared the preliminary tests on Mar 24 out of 250,000 candidates. A total of 9,400 job seekers finally sat for the written tests.