Srinagar, Mar 17: The J&K Service Selection Board is issuing erroneous Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) applications for recruitment to various government departments in the state.
 Documents in possession of Greater Kashmir reveal that SSB provides limited choice to candidates to fill in their qualification details even if they possess more than one degree.
 OMR application has one checkbox to be marked for professional and academic degrees. The authorities are ignoring candidates who have more than one professional degree. For instance, the code number for B Ed is 23 in the instruction sheet while that of MCA is 83. And when a candidate has to fill in his academic details in the OMR, he has just one choice to make: to mark just one subject as his/her qualification even if he possesses both of them, since the SSB keeps just one checkbox for the two degrees on OMR—in contradiction to what instructions sheets state.
 Every year, the SSB issues OMR application forms along with instructions for recruiting the candidates to various departments. But it is however violating its own norms by slashing the choice to candidates to fill in just one subject. According to the instruction sheets, for every discipline—whether professional or academic—a checkbox should be in application form to let students fill in their maximum academic and professional details.
 The instruction sheets state that for each qualification, a separate checkbox should be on the OMR to let the candidates furnish codes for each qualification—both technical and academic. If a candidate has two degrees – BCA and B Ed – he has just one choice to make while he is debarred from the other one. Similarly if a candidate has both MCA and M Ed degrees, the candidate has only one choice to make on OMR, even though instruction sheets giving them the prerogative to fill up both.
 When contacted, Secretary SSB Imam Din said for a particular job irrelevant qualification is not necessary to be filled up in the application. “There are sufficient columns in the application form and it depends on the nature of job. One need not show more than what the eligibility remains,” he said.
 However, the Secretary said candidates having more than one degree can fill in the details in the columns above main set of columns. “If we keep separate column for each subject, we may end up nowhere,” he said.
 Observers said the SSB pattern of formulating the OMR applications is unfit and needs to be modified. “The point is if a candidate has both BCA and B Ed degrees, the application form only permits him to fill in the details of one discipline only. This is sheer negligence,” a group of academics told Greater Kashmir. “Similarly, if a candidate is having MCA and M Ed degrees, he can only fill in one’s detail. This way how would the SSB know that a postgraduate in a professional /technical field has also done M Ed,” they said.

Lastupdate on : Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 IST