Tamil Nadu
Haryanvis have made their mark in many a field, but their proficiency in Tamil is enough to strain the credulity of even the most gullible.
So, when the Tamil Nadu Postal Department found a large number of candidates from Haryana and even Punjab excelling in Tamil, its suspicions were raised. A complaint to the CBI followed, triggering a probe by the investigating agency.
The examination for direct recruitment of postmen and mail guards for the Tamil Nadu circle of the postal department had taken place on December 11, 2016, at five centres in the state. It had four papers in General Knowledge, Mathematics, English and Tamil.
When the results were announced in March 2017, it was found that several candidates from Haryana and some from Maharashtra and Punjab (who had also registered from Haryana) had scored unusually high in all subjects, including Tamil.
"It was revealed that candidates from Haryana who had scored high had studied under Haryana State Board of Education and there was no chance of them having proficiency in the Tamil language," the FIR alleged.
That was not the only thing out of sync.
It also came to light that as many as 47 candidates had used a computer with the same IP address from Sonic Wireless Technologies, Haryana, though they belonged to various districts of the state. Of these, 36 had similar email ids which increased suspicion.
The agency registered a case on the basis of complaints from the Tamil Nadu Postal Department.
"The malpractice had been carried out by some unknown candidates with the help of public servants in scoring high marks resulting in securing a position in division wise select list of the written examination for the post of Direct Recruit Postman and Mail Guard examination..." the FIR alleged.
Interestingly, Tamil was officially the second language in Haryana for forty years, from 1969 till 2010. So the state does have a strange, but legitimate, Tamil connection.