Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 4: Moving away from past practice and a set precedence, the State Bank of India (SBI) in its fresh recruitment drive for the second time for Kashmir and Ladakh regions has made it mandatory for the candidates that they must be proficient in official language of the State.
As per the recruitment Notice of SBI for the post of Junior Associates and junior agricultural associates in clerical cadre vide its advertisement No. CRPD/CR/2016-17/01, it has been made mandatory for the new recruits that they must know the official language of the State.
As per the advertisement, 188 posts have been advertised only for two regions of the State including Kashmir valley and Ladakh, ignoring Jammu but for the same the candidates should be proficient (reading, writing, speaking and understanding) the official language of the State which is Urdu. This way the majority of candidates especially belonging to Jammu region and minorities from the Valley who are in exile for over last 27 years can’t apply as they don’t know the official language.
Sources said that the people have expressed their resentment against the advertisement notice and they have conveyed the same to the banking authorities in the State as well. Sending a strong dissent note to the banking authorities the members of civil society have termed it a deliberate attempt of the authorities to debar the Jammu candidates as majority of them are not conversant with Urdu language and they neither can read nor write the same.
Sources said that last time also the Bank had issued an advertisement of the same nature and it was openly challenged by various organizations in the State with the result the Bank replaced the advertisement notice by a new one.
However, this time again the same type of notice has been issued deliberately to deprive the people of this region from applying for the posts in banking, sources added.
When contacted Balwant Singh Mankotia, president National Panthers Party (NPP) said that his Party had last time also protested against such recruitment notice and this time it will again launch the agitation for the same. He said any person from J&K can apply for the posts in bank and the SBI should change the notification immediately and issue a fresh one in this regard.
Same were the views of President Panun Kashmir (PK), Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo who termed the notification totally deviation from a set recruitment policy laid by the bank since long.
Terming it a human rights violation, he said those who don’t know the official language or regional are this way debarred from recruitment. He demanded that the notification be replaced as there is no purpose of knowing the regional language as in nationalized banks the banking is done in English language or Hindi.
Official sources however said that last time a high level meeting of RBI authorities with State Government representatives as well as SBI management was held in Srinagar in which it was decided to give chance to the local youth in recruitment for expansion of the Bank in Kashmir valley and Ladakh region as the non locals were not ready to serve there due to certain reasons.
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