Uniform cut-off of 40 across State, Mains exam rescheduled to Jun 17

J&K Bank PO recruitment

JAMMU: Giving in to massive protests held across the Jammu region against the varying cut-off for the Probationary Officer (Preliminary) examination—allegedly skewed towards Kashmir, the Jammu and Kashmir Bank on Monday announced a uniform cut-off of 40 marks across the state, as relaxation of policy.

The Bank also rescheduled the Mains examination for June 17, which was earlier to be held for 250 vacancies on May 20.

The bank had prepared merit lists for selection of candidates to Main Exam for the posts of Probationary Officers District-wise, triggering a strong resentment among the unsuccessful candidates from Jammu, who alleged that the cut off marks for various Districts have been fixed in a manner putting Jammu candidates to an obvious disadvantage.

The cut-off varied to a large extent and the percentage for Jammu districts was much higher than the Valley districts.

While Jammu district had a cut-off criteria of 63 marks out of 100, followed by 57 for Udhampur, and 56 each for Kathua and Samba, the same was set at 40 for Pulwama and Baramulla, 41 for Anantnag, Kulgam, Kupwara and Bandipora, and 42 for Srinagar.

Usually the selection lists of officers in J&K Bank are issued on State level, instead of District wise as adopted by the Bank authorities in the ongoing selection process.

The candidates alleged the same was not mentioned in the advertisement notice for these posts.
On Monday, however, J&K Bank Chairman, Parvez Ahmad took to Twitter to break the ‘good news’.

“In view of the various representations received from candidates & also the directions from the Hon'ble Governor Bank has decided to declare a uniform cut off of 40 across the state in relaxation of policy,” he tweeted.

“All those candidates having assessment score of 40 and above shall be eligible to write the mains,” he wrote.

In a notification issued later in the day, the bank said that the examination for the Mains exam which was scheduled on 20th May will now be held on June 17.

Earlier on Saturday, the bank had dismissed protests by a group of unsuccessful candidates over alleged discrimination in the selection of probationary officers, saying its recruitment process is completely transparent.

"Post declaration of the results of the bank's online recruitment test for the preliminary examination conducted by institute of banking personnel selection (IBPS), Mumbai for the selection of probationary officers in the bank, it has come to the notice of the bank that there is a parochial attempt by some vested interests to misguide the applicants with baseless misinformation on the selection process being skewed to a particular district on the basis of merit cut off," the bank had said in an advertisement to local dailies.

It said the bank has a board approved policy for the recruitment of officers (probationary officers) and clerks (banking associates) wherein the process is kick-started by forecasting the vacancies district wise to quantify the number of posts, followed by issuing of notification for soliciting applications clearly notifying that the vacancies are as per district-wise requirement followed by declaration of district-wise merit list and putting it in public domain.

"The bank has religiously adhered to the board approved policy and process with absolute transparency. The cut off has been decided by the bank on the basis of merit list provided by the IBPS and as per the geographic distribution of vacancies in each district of the state which has been communicated ab initio by the bank at the time of issuance of first notification," the bank said.

It said the bank reiterates that its recruitment process is completely transparent and public in general and applicants in particular, should not fall prey to the misinformation campaign by some mischievous elements on social media by making assertions which are hypothetical, libellous and aimed at tarnishing the image of J&K bank branch.