Protest, CM’s effort in vain as SBI refuses to postpone exam

CHENNAI: CPM Madurai MP Su Venkatesan on Saturday hit out at the BJP government at the Centre for not changing the dates for the SBI main exam for recruitment of junior associates scheduled to be held on Pongal Day on Sunday.

In a tweet, he wrote that the Union Finance Ministry has said that the exam date cannot be changed despite the 12-hour long sit-in protest seeking postponement of the exam and the Chief Minister’s intervention.

“The BJP government’s daily work is to insult and ignore our culture and rights. Tamil Nadu will never forgive anti-Tamil BJP,” he tweeted after the SBI wrote to him explaining the inability to change exam dates.

Earlier, Venkatesan along with his Lok Sabha counterparts from the state - VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan, Thamizhachi Thangapandian of DMK and Dr A Chellakumar of Congress resorted to12-hour long sit-in protest at SBI Chennai head office at Nungambakkam on Friday.

In the letter to Venkatesan, SBI deputy managing director (HR) Om Prakash Mishra said that already 13,000 candidates have been allotted centres in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. “In the event of postponement of the main exam in TN and Puducherry, the recruitment exercise will be delayed and customer services will be affected at branches across the state,” he said, pointing to the exams being conducted in 13 regional languages in addition to Hindi and English. “Postponement of the main exam would entail preparation of fresh sets of questionnaires in all the languages. This would cause a delay of a minimum of three to four months subject to availability of translators and exam centres, rendering the entire project uncertain,” he said, adding that the candidates would have made travel plans to reach the exam centres and postponing the exam would create dissatisfaction all around.