The Special Recruitment Drive that never was

Times of India: Bhubaneswar: Sunday, 27 December 2015.

By promising to facilitate placement of technical and professional graduates in private companies, the state government collected around Rs 48 lakh from around 48,000 students last year. Christened the Special Recruitment Drive (SRD) 2014 and originally planned to be held from September 17 last year, it never happened.

Responding to an application under the RTI Act, the Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) recently said preparations for the drive are still on. "In order to outsource a part of the programme, party selection process is going on," it said.

The BPUT spent Rs 38,000 on advertisement of the drive and paid Rs 25,000 honorarium each to six faculty members to contact companies interested in participating in the event for student recruitment. Technical education minister Sanjay Das Burma had reviewed progress of the drive multiple times last year.

Passouts of engineering, MBA, MCA and pharma graduates/post graduates had registered for the initiative, which has lost relevance since a year has already passed.

The state government had announced to short-list the registered students through an online test. However, no such test was conducted.

Though the government in September last year announced to postpone the drive for sometime to ensure better participation of potential recruiters, the BPUT said it was not the case.

On August 12, 2014, a high-level committee led by the then technical education secretary, Chandra Sekhar Kumar, had decided to develop a website for the drive and seek technical support for the purpose from NIC. However, the BPUT in its RTI reply said, "No such website was made."

Biplab Mohanty, president of BPUT student protection council (BSPC), a student body, who obtained the RTI information, on Friday threatened that the body would agitate if the BPUT doesn't announce an inquiry into the corruption. "We also demand that the government should either come out with a date for the SRD or declare that it would not happen and return the money collected from the students," he said.

BPUT vice-chancellor S S Patnaik could not be contacted for comments.