Top News

Most people would know that banks or financial institutions do not give loans if the CIBIL score is poor, but very few people would know that a job can also be lost if the CIBIL score is poor. In one such case, the State Bank of India (SBI) dismissed an employee from the job due to a poor CIBIL score. Not only this, the Madras High Court has also upheld SBI's decision to dismiss the employee from the job.

The High Court has rejected the petition of the dismissed employee. The current case was about the appointment of a Circle Based Officer (CBO) in SBI in Chennai. P. Karthikeyan, the employee who was dismissed from the job by canceling the appointment letter on the basis of a poor CIBIL score, had filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court demanding cancellation of the dismissal order and an order to reinstate him on the job.

Madras High Court judge N. Mala dismissed the petition in an order given on June 2. The High Court said in the order that there is another important aspect in the case which needs to be mentioned here and that is that the bank took a prudent decision to disqualify the candidate who defaulted in repaying the loan and had a poor CIBIL score or adverse reports from external agencies. The court said that the possible reason behind this could be that in the banking business, people deal with public money and hence there is a need to maintain strict financial discipline.

Apart from this, there should be efficiency related to public money. The High Court said that those with poor financial discipline or those who do not have financial discipline cannot be trusted to do work related to public money. Looking at the CIBIL report presented by the bank, the court found that according to the bank, there were 9 irregular credit facilities and more than 10 loan investigations against the petitioner between 2016 and 2021. The court said that the petitioner has also admitted to default in loan repayment. In such a situation, the court rejected the argument of discrimination and dismissed the petition.

What was the matter
In this case, the petitioner applied for CBO recruitment in SBI under the notification issued on 27 July 2020. He passed the written examination and interview, as well as after the medical examination and seeing all the certificates and CIBIL, he was issued an appointment letter on 12 March 2021. He said that on 12 March 2021, the bank saw his CIBIL report and on 16 March, after verifying it, clarification was sought from the petitioner on it.

The petitioner clarified and requested to continue the job but the bank cancelled his appointment letter on the basis of poor CIBIL report. While the petitioner said that on the date of notification, he had no loan outstanding and he had repaid all the loans, in such a situation, it is wrong to remove him from the job based on eligibility rule clause one (e). But the bank told the High Court that as per the eligibility criteria, candidates with poor CIBIL scores, defaulting in repaying the loan, or having adverse reports from external agencies in this regard were not eligible for appointment. It said that the petitioner's CIBIL report revealed adverse credit history regarding loan repayment and credit card usage, hence he was found ineligible under clause one (e) of the eligibility criteria.

The bank also said that the petitioner had concealed this important information and hence he does not have the right to claim continuation of the job. It said that the petitioner had not paid more than one installment of the loan, hence it cannot be compared with the cases of others, his case is different.

Disclaimer: This content has been sourced and edited from Dainik Jagran. While we have made modifications for clarity and presentation, the original content belongs to its respective authors and website. We do not claim ownership of the content.