Krishna Tirath

New Delhi, Sept. 13: The Central Administrative Tribunal today set aside Doordarshan’s recruitment of 25 anchors-cum-correspondents, saying the selection was rigged to favour Union minister Krishna Tirath’s daughter Yashvi and other well-connected candidates.

The order will be challenged in Delhi High Court, said officials of Prasar Bharati, which had conducted the selection along with Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited, an information & broadcasting ministry arm.

The tribunal’s order has not only tainted Prasar Bharati but has increased the problems of Tirath, the women and child development minister. Government and Congress sources said the Prime Minister’s performance-monitoring scheme had found her to be one of the worst performers in the Union cabinet.

In January, Tirath’s ministry had issued a newspaper ad where the photograph of former Pakistan air chief Tanvir Ahmed was mistakenly inserted with those of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, the howler forcing the Prime Minister to issue an apology.

The DD selection process consisted of a written test, an audition, a test of reporting skills and an interview, with all four stages expected to carry equal weight. The tests were conducted from October 2008 and the interview took place in December that year.

An unsuccessful candidate, H.B.S. Gautam, moved the tribunal alleging the weight given to the interview was increased from one-fourth to one-third of the aggregate just two days before the interview, when the scores from the other three tests were already known. So, “the scope of misuse was increased”.

The tribunal observed that Yashvi had been 33rd on the merit list before the interview, where she was awarded 90 marks out of 100, helping her bag one of the 12 jobs in her grade. “This is a glaring example of arbitrariness obviously to favour her,” its order said.

It noted that some candidates had “completely foundered” in the interview after being “very high” on the merit list till then. “There was no satisfactory explanation from the respondents about the irregularities.”

Tirath said: “The selection was transparent and honoured merit. I do not much intervene in such matters but I think the process through which Yashvi was recruited was totally fair.”