Recommended Yet Dropped From the Gazette: 105 BCS Candidates Get Assurance of Re-Verification

As many as 105 candidates who received the final recommendation of the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (PSC) in the 45th BCS have been left out of the gazette. They allege that no specific reason was given. The deprived candidates have taken to the streets in protest. Meanwhile, State Minister for Public Administration Md Abdul Bari has said that all the information of the dropped candidates will be re-examined (re-verified), and that everyone found eligible within the legal framework will be appointed.

On the night of 14 October, the Ministry of Public Administration published the final notification of the 45th BCS. Of the 1,807 candidates recommended by the PSC, the jobs of 1,702 were confirmed, but 105 were left out. Before that, a long 11 months had passed waiting for the gazette.

One of those dropped is Shamim Al Mahadi. The young man from Paschim Bejgram in Hatibandha upazila of Lalmonirhat finished his studies at Bangladesh Agricultural University and was preparing for the BCS. His mother, Aleya Begum, raised three children and educated them through farming and a cattle farm at home. A year ago she was proud at the news of her son's recommendation; now she is pained not to see his name in the gazette.

Aleya Begum said: 'Let anyone from the government come and verify our area in person. If even one person in the village can say anything bad about my son, I will have no further claim about his job. Let them enquire with his school, college and university teachers too. If he is proven innocent everywhere, why should my son be deprived without having done any wrong?'

According to the candidates, even after passing every stage of the PSC and being recommended, they were not gazetted without any specific reason. None of them faces any criminal case or any allegation of anti-state offences.

Having lost jobs earned transparently on merit, these young people have taken to the streets amid extreme uncertainty. They are staging a sit-in in front of the Raju Memorial Sculpture at Dhaka University. The deprived candidates have even announced 'self-immolation' at Shahbagh if their appointments are not confirmed through a supplementary gazette without delay.

At the sit-in, a tearful Nure Alam, one of the gazette-deprived, said: 'I was recommended for the Ansar cadre in the 44th BCS and am currently working as an assistant director. But although I was newly recommended for the police cadre in the 45th BCS, this time I have been dropped from the gazette. I received clearance in my previous job — I want an explanation from the government as to how I was dropped this time.'

Another candidate, Moniruzzaman, had been recommended for the fisheries cadre. He said: 'I passed the BCS after four or five years of relentless hard work. Why must I face this punishment today without committing any offence? I do not know what answer to give my parents. We are not asking anyone for mercy; we want back the job we earned with our own merit.'

The candidates have placed five demands before the government. These include announcing a specific date for a fresh notification, publishing a supplementary gazette for candidates with no legal barrier, informing them in writing of the reasons for exclusion, giving them an opportunity to defend themselves, and ensuring transparency about the information of candidates dropped in administrative verification.

After the final BCS results, candidates are verified for background checks before the gazette is published. The practice was introduced mainly in the 1920s during the British era; its main purpose then was to suppress the anti-British movement and to check candidates' political beliefs and anti-government activity in recruitment. Under police policy, verification is supposed to check only whether there is a specific criminal case or crime record against a candidate. But there have long been allegations that this century-old colonial rule is used to block merit-based appointments on the pretext of relatives' political identities or other irrelevant information.

Professor Rezwana Karim Snigdha of the Department of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University said: 'Using an outdated British-era verification practice to hold back the merit and future of young people in an independent state is a major systemic flaw. If there is no specific information of a criminal offence or a court sentence against a candidate, depriving them on political or any other pretext is in no way acceptable. Depriving candidates who have proven their merit of their rightful appointments is a state structural corruption. This state injustice must stop immediately.'

On the overall matter, State Minister for Public Administration Md Abdul Bari said: 'The verification process in government jobs is a regular matter; it has always been there, it is nothing new. Of those whose names did not appear in the notification, more than half were temporarily left out because of shortcomings in their necessary papers and other legal documents. The cases of the rest whose names did not appear have come to our attention.'

The state minister added: 'There is a clear instruction from the Prime Minister that not a single citizen of the country should be deprived of the rights due to them under the laws and rules of the state. So an initiative will be taken to re-verify all the information of the dropped candidates. Those who are considered eligible for the job within the legal framework will each be appointed. You have seen before, in the 49th BCS too, that eligible candidates got jobs through re-verification even after the final gazette was published.'

It now remains to be seen how quickly the state minister's assurance takes real shape, and how many of the 105 deprived candidates regain in a supplementary gazette the jobs they earned on merit.