Chennai: The Madras High Court yesterday closed a petition that alleged candidates from northern states were preferred for certain posts over aspirants from Tamilnadu. The bench comprising Justice A D Jagadish Chandira accepted the submission made by the CBI which gave a clean chit to Southern Railway in the 2014 recruitment case.

The allegations were made by petitioner P Panneerselvam in 2014. He had alleged that the railway authorities hampered the recruitment process for posts like helper, peon, sanitary worker, trackman by recruiting non-Tamil speaking candidates from the north and had urged the court to order a CBI probe into the issue. The CBI submitted that preliminary investigation into the matter found no prima facie case for further probe. It further stated that Panneerselvam had not cleared the examination.

Counsel for Railways P T Ramkumar informed the bench that 16, 94,729 applications were received for the recruitment out of which 11,25,405 were found to be eligible. Among this, 3,13,821 applications were from the State of which 2,17,556 were eligible for recruiting.

Of the 12,265 selected, a total of 7,598 were from southern states, 3,096 from eastern, 1,099 from western, 448 from northern and 24 from central states.