Odisha Government terminates empanelment of IT firm ‘involved’ in recruitment scam

The Odisha Government terminated the empanelment of an IT firm, which was allegedly involved in the sub-inspector recruitment scam, according to a notification.

The Tier-1 empanelment of Bhubaneswar-based Silicon Tech Lab Pvt Ltd was terminated by the Electronics and IT Department for “violation of multiple material clauses of its service agreement”, the notification said.

The Odisha Police Recruitment Board (OPRB) had outsourced the conduct of the Combined Police Service Examination (CPSE) 2024 for the recruitment of 933 sub-inspectors to Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) ITI Ltd, which further sub-contracted the work to Silicon Techlab.

Silicon Techlab, in turn, assigned key responsibilities to Panchsoft Technologies.

The irregularities were detected after 114 aspirants and three suspected brokers were nabbed on the night of September 29 at the State’s border with Andhra Pradesh when they were going to a “special coaching” centre in Vijayanagaram from Bhubaneswar.

According to police, the arrested aspirants had paid ₹10 lakh each to the racket, and were supposed to pay another ₹25 lakh after securing the job.

Later, the Crime Branch of Odisha Police took some more brokers into custody and arrested the mastermind of the scam. Silicon Techlab’s promoter, Suresh Nayak, was also arrested.

The case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on November 12.