Mumbai: A candidate who scored just 7.5 out of 100 in the BMC’s junior engineer recruitment examination and 80 out of 200 in CIDCO’s test went on to score 194 out of 200 in the MMRDA recruitment examination. Another, who scored 8.5 out of 100 in the BMC test and 96 out of 200 in Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) junior engineer examination, secured 192 out of 200 in the MMRDA test.Such sharp variations in candidates’ performance across government recruitment examinations held over the past few months have triggered complaints to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), with aspirants seeking a detailed investigation into its engineering recruitment examination.Candidates have pointed to more examples of discrepancies involving examinations conducted by the BMC, PMC, MahaTransco, MIDC, CIDCO and Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran during the 2025-26 recruitment cycle. They claim candidates who scored as low as 7, 8, 15 and 76 marks in other recruitment tests have emerged among the higher ranked candidates in the MMRDA examination.Aspirants have also alleged that 13 of the top 16 candidates appeared for the MMRDA examination at the same centre at Wadi in Nagpur. They have sought CCTV footage of candidates who scored 200 out of 200 and those selected for appointment, besides scrutiny of response times, answering patterns, response sheets and digital audit logs maintained by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).MMRDA has rejected allegations of wrongdoing. “The criticism and allegations of a scam or malpractice in this recruitment examination are completely baseless,” the authority said. It added that the examination was conducted through a government-approved agency and that normalisation and evaluation were carried out as per the prescribed methodology.MMRDA said the provisional merit list is under verification and the final list will be published after the process is completed.Of the 16 cadres for which recruitment was undertaken, Junior Engineer (Civil) received 14,714 applications for 82 vacancies. Candidates began raising objections after the provisional merit list was released.“I completed my bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 2023 and have since been preparing for various government recruitment examinations. I scored 166 in the Pune Municipal Corporation recruitment test and almost the same in the MMRDA test,” said Rishikesh Shinde, whose farmer father took a loan to fund his education.Other aspirants said variations of 10 to 20 marks between examinations were understandable, but much larger swings warranted scrutiny. “We study from the same textbooks and prepare for broadly similar recruitment tests. When there is such a huge difference in the scores of some candidates, it naturally raises questions about the integrity of the examination,” one candidate said.The Engineers’ Association has written to MMRDA seeking a technical audit. It has demanded examination of response times and answering patterns, disclosure of the TCS audit log report and response sheets of selected candidates. It has also asked that the recruitment process proceed only after the concerns are verified and transparency ensured.The Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee has also sought an investigation into what it termed “abnormal discrepancies” in candidates’ marks across examinations conducted by PMC, CIDCO, BMC and other agencies, along with independent verification of candidates who received 200 out of 200 after normalisation.Candidates maintain that their concerns are not based merely on final scores but on the need to examine raw marks, normalised marks, response sheets, audit logs and CCTV footage before the recruitment process is concluded.
