CPI urges Jaitley to intervene in SBI recruitment of clerks

Chennai, April 29  The Communist Party of India (CPI) has urged union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to intervene and scrap the condition that prevents education loan defaulters from applying for clerical jobs in the State Bank of India (SBI).

In a letter to Jaitley, CPI general secretary S. Sudhakar Reddy also urged the SBI management and the banking department to stall the recruitment process and ensure no such problem for educated unemployed youth in future.

"If need be the conduct of the examination be postponed so that everybody otherwise eligible can get a chance to sit in the examination," Reddy said.

He urged Jaitley to immediately intervene and get this eligibility criteria dropped.

The SBI is hiring 17,140 clerks and has called for applications.

However, the bank has barred people with a record of defaults in repayment of loans or credit card dues or with an adverse report from a credit information company from applying.

Also, "candidates against whom there is/are adverse report regarding character and antecedents, moral turpitude are not eligible to apply for the post", said the SBI notification.

Reddy said so far the eligibility criteria for the post of clerks were graduation in any stream and for the specialised category graduation in that particular stream.

But this time SBI has added a new condition.

"This renders all those candidates who have defaulted payment of their educational loans ineligible to take part in the opportunity for a job in the SBI. This is absolutely inappropriate and objectionable," Reddy said.

"The very spirit of educational loan is to facilitate the student pursue his or her education and repay the same on getting a job. This kind of crippling criterion will only subject the educated unemployed into double jeopardy," he added.

"The bank had earlier too had shamed the educational loan defaulters by displaying their pictures on the notice board of the bank branches. This kind of vengeful attitude against young aspirants is very much unbecoming of a state-owned bank particularly in the background of the entire nation looking agog at the mounting NPAs of nearly four lakh crores," Reddy said.