The Central Crime Branch (CCB), Job Racket Wing, has filed a chargesheet against V. Senthil Balaji, DMK MLA from Aravakurichi, who was Transport Minister in the AIADMK government between 2011 and 2015, for his involvement in a scam in recruitment to transport corporations.

The chargesheet names 46 other persons, including his personal assistants, former managing directors of transport corporations, junior engineers and others.

Investigation revealed that during 2014-15, Mr. Balaji entered into a criminal conspiracy with then managing directors of all State Transport Undertakings (STUs) and other officers of transport corporations to obtain illegal gratification from candidates to recruit them as driver, conductor, junior tradesman, junior assistant, junior engineer and assistant engineer in the transport corporations, said the chargesheet.

The final report of the CCB alleged that Mr. Balaji colluded with his close associates, B. Shanmugam and M. Karthikeyan alias Karthik, and collected data from all State Transport Corporations through managing directors and officers of the personnel section to collate complete data of the candidates.

He got illegal gratification from the candidates and sent lists to the managing directors, appointing authority and personnel section officers of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation to issue appointment orders for the candidates mentioned in the said list.

Investigation also revealed that appointment orders were issued to 33 candidates for the post of junior engineer, in accordance with the list illegally furnished by Mr. Balaji, the then managing director, joint MD, senior deputy manager (HR) and deputy manager, without following communal reservation.

They fraudulently altered the original interview marks of candidates in the registers, the chargesheet said. The registers containing details of candidates, maintained in the personnel section, were tampered with and forged.

Interview marks were fraudulently reduced for meritorious candidates.

Consequently, the files, records and registers were falsely fabricated by officials, and thereby they committed offences punishable under Sections 465 (Punishment for forgery), 468 (Forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (Using genuine as forged) dishonestly uses as genuine and 420 (Cheating) of IPC r/w 120 (B) (Criminal Conspiracy) of the IPC and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Originally, the case was registered based on a complaint of S. Devasagayamin in 2015 alleging that C. Palani, who was working as a conductor in Metropolitan Transport Corporation, received ₹2.6 lakh to arrange a conductor’s job for his son.