The State Bank of Sikkim selected Manu Gautam (26 marks) for an Assistant Manager job and rejected Ugen Tenzing Bhutia (128 marks) for the same one. The CAG, after extensive forensic effort, has concluded that the bank's recruitment policy may have included one or two non-merit-based factors.
The Comptroller and Auditor General's Performance Audit on the State Bank of Sikkim — the only state-owned bank in India — found that against 26 Assistant Manager posts, candidates scoring 26 to 42 marks were selected while candidates scoring 55 to 128 marks were not even called for interviews. Top scorer Ugen Tenzing Bhutia (128/200) was rejected. Sandhya Pradhan (106), Shreya Gautam (100), and Suraj Basnet (98) were also bumped. Manu Gautam (26 marks) made the cut. The auditors then went looking for the evaluation sheets, cut-off marks, interview panel records, and attendance registers that would explain how this happened — and found none of them. One selected candidate's answer sheet had no signature from either the candidate or the invigilator. As a bonus, CAG flagged ₹3.65 crore deposited into SBS employees' personal accounts from 166 borrowers' accounts (in 64 instances, on the exact same day the loans were disbursed) and noted that 52% of the bank's ₹3,220 crore loan book has become NPAs. The state government has promised 'exemplary action,' which on past form means the show-cause notices will be issued in alphabetical order until everyone forgets.