SHILLONG: A major anomaly has been detected in the physical test conducted for selection of demonstrator under Soil and Water Conservation department.
The selection test was conducted by the West Jaintia Hills District Selection Committee (DSC) on September 1 and 2.
Interestingly the DSC had in fact ‘outsourced’ the conduct of the physical test to the Sports and Youth Affairs department.
Sources on Wednesday revealed that the candidates were supposed to complete a distance of 10 kms in an hour from Kiang Nangbah memorial stone to the first bridge of Syntiew Ksiar to Lekyrnah and back to the Kiang Nangbah.
Strangely, sources said that there was no official at Lekyrnah to monitor whether the candidates completed the round or not before returning to Kiang Nangbah memorial stone.
“A number of candidates returned halfway. Strangely, two candidates completed the 10 km distance in half-an-hour, which is questionable and raises concern about the test conducted,” sources said adding that the whole controversy could have been avoided if the physical test was held at Jrisalin ground in Jowai.
“In fact, it was earlier decided that the physical test will be conducted in the Jrisalin ground. But in the last minute decision was taken to conduct the test along the route from Kiang Nangbah memorial stone to Lekyrnah,” sources said.
Meanwhile, sources said that the Sports and Youth Affairs department should have handed over all the relevant documents to the DSC once it completed the physical test.
Sources alleged that the final list may have been tampered as the department of Sports and Youth Affairs failed to hand over the documents to the DSC for further scrutiny.
Sources also questioned the involvement of the Soil and Conservation department in this exercise.
“We failed to understand why the department came into the picture when it is the job of the DSC to conduct the test,” sources added.
Meanwhile, few of the aggrieved candidates have complained that the physical test was conducted in an unorganised and unprofessional manner.
According to the aggrieved candidates, there were only two people deputed at the starting point to allot the chest numbers to the candidates who have come for the physical test.
“It took a lot of time even to allot the chest number since there are 200 candidates in one batch,” the aggrieved candidates said even as they also alleged that there was hardly any official who would monitor to ensure that all the candidates complete the stipulated 10 km distance.
It may be mentioned that over 1000 plus candidates appeared for the physical test.