Bangalore : The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday alleged that the State government is trying to project all candidates selected for the gazetted probationer’s post by the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) in 2011 as “guilty of corrupt practices” by scrapping the provisional selection list. The government should instead order fresh interviews to choose meritorious candidates and keep away the corrupt, the party said.

“The government’s action is a dangerous trend as it gives an impression that all the successful candidates were guilty of malpractice. And to say that all the 362 successful candidates are tainted is the height of nonsense,” BJP MLA and former Law Minister S. Suresh Kumar told presspersons.

He did not agree with the government’s stand that several candidates making phone calls to KPSC members had provedlarge-scale irregularities.

“Phone call could only be corroborative evidence,” he said, and claimed that even the Criminal Investigation Department report did not say that all the candidates were selected through corrupt practices. He argued that it was the duty of the government to separate the meritorious and honest candidates from the group of those who committed malpractices. Citing the judgment of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana with respect to malpractices in the selection of candidates by the Punjab Public Service Commission, he said the court had asked for separating meritorious candidates from those facing charge.