June 19: The railways have deferred the recruitment examinations scheduled across India on June 27 after the CBI’s revelation yesterday of a question-leak racket involving two senior officials and their families.

Railway sources said the affected exams of June 6 and 13 too could be cancelled and fresh tests held since 780 to 1,000 candidates were suspected to have known the questions.

New dates will soon be announced for the June 27 exam, meant to recruit enquiry-and-reservation clerks and goods guards, a Railway Board official said.

Sources said the CBI had found sealed question papers of the June 27 exam at the Railway Recruitment Board office on Calcutta’s R.G. Kar Road during their countrywide raids on Thursday that busted the racket and netted eight people.

CBI officials said more arrests were likely in a day or two from Calcutta, Mumbai, Raipur and Bangalore. They said most of the racket’s agents were from Andhra, Karnataka, Bihar, Bengal and Maharashtra.

The railways had yesterday suspended S.M. Sharma, appointed by Mamata Banerjee as chairman of the Railway Recruitment Board of Mumbai, following Thursday’s arrest of his son Vivek.

CBI officials said the agency was questioning Sharma somewhere in Mumbai and had written to the Centre for permission to arrest him. Those arrested include the former additional divisional railway manager of Raipur, A.K. Jagannathan, and his son Srujan. Jagannathan retired recently and was appointed head of the Hasan-Mangalore Railway Development Corporation.

The CBI had received the first leads about the racket following a quarrel over the spoils between six agents of the ring, all of them members of Jagannathan’s family, agency sources said without further explanation.

The Railway Board is considering ways to tighten vigil on the country’s 20 Railway Recruitment Boards, which conduct the exams for Group C and D posts. “We are doing a technical audit in close co-ordination with the CBI,” a board official said.

But other railway sources said it would be difficult to curb corruption in recruitment.

Last November, Mamata had summarily removed the chairmen of all the recruitment boards, all of them appointed during Lalu Prasad’s tenure as minister. The drive was taken up after reports of question leaks in Allahabad and Ajmer.

“All the new chairmen were appointed by the Railway Board after Mamata had personally approved their names,” a senior ministry official said. “The two examinations for which the arrests have been made are the first (recruitment scandal) under the new chairmen.”

Sources said the recruitment board chairmen are chosen from among mid-level railway officials with good service records. “Officials with high prospects don’t usually opt for the post. It is not a coveted posting in the railways,” a source said.

Sharma’s flat, No. 14 in Block H of the plush Badhwar Park railway quarters in Cuffe Parade, was locked today. Two of his cars, including a black Pajero, were parked below the building.

His neighbours refused to speak and security officials said they didn’t know where Sharma was. His office at the Bombay Central terminus too was closed.

Top officials of Central and Western Railway live in Badhwar Park, named after the first Indian chairman of the Railway Board, Fateh Chand Badhwar. The complex has two tennis courts, a badminton court, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, and billiards and pool tables apart from a library.