Mega DSC–2025 was projected as the Chandrababu Naidu government’s flagship recruitment exercise. But what was presented as a transparent pathway to 16,347 teacher posts is now facing a widening trail of questions—from TET eligibility and Sports Quota certificates to examination control, merit lists, outsourced personnel and recorded negotiations for jobs. The issue can no longer be dismissed as the grievance of one unsuccessful candidate or an isolated district-level error. Case after case is emerging from Kurnool, Chittoor, East Godavari and other districts, strengthening the demand for an independent investigation.
A teacher appointed without qualifying TET
The Kurnool case has become one of the clearest examples of why the entire recruitment requires scrutiny.
Ediga Prabhakar, a BC candidate, was appointed as an SGT under the Sports Quota despite securing only about 65 marks in TET. Under the eligibility standards cited in the recruitment process, a BC candidate required 75 out of 150 marks. Yet the candidate crossed the certificate-verification process, received a posting and entered service.
This is not a minor clerical discrepancy. TET is the foundational eligibility examination for a teacher appointment. The obvious question is how a candidate who did not reach the qualifying threshold passed through multiple layers of scrutiny.
Certificate verification was not a blind automated process. Candidate records were physically examined before appointment. If Prabhakar’s TET score was below the prescribed threshold, who cleared the file? Was the rule misunderstood, ignored or overridden? And if one such candidate could cross the system, how many more cases remain undetected?
The report therefore calls for a statewide computer-assisted cross-verification of every selected candidate’s TET score, reservation category, subject eligibility and post allotted.
Different districts, different eligibility questions
The Kurnool case does not stand alone.
In Chittoor, the material cites an OC candidate who required 90 TET marks but had only 79, yet secured a School Assistant appointment. In East Godavari, another candidate is stated to have qualified TET in Telugu but received a School Assistant post in Social Studies.
These are fundamentally different kinds of discrepancies—one concerns the minimum qualifying score, another concerns subject eligibility. Their occurrence across districts makes it difficult to explain the issue merely as a single administrative oversight.
If the government maintains that the recruitment was flawless, the most direct response is simple: publish the candidate-wise eligibility data and allow public verification.
Sports Quota opened another front
The Sports Quota has become the most contentious part of Mega DSC.
The government itself told the Assembly that the Sports DSC covered 421 vacancies, 3,600 candidates and 5,328 post preferences, and that eligible meritorious sportspersons were processed without a competitive examination under the new policy framework.
The government later stated that 372 Sports Quota candidates were selected, with 46 from OC, 185 BC, 112 SC and 29 ST categories.
That makes certificate verification absolutely critical. If no written DSC examination is required, the integrity of the appointment depends heavily on whether the sports achievement itself is genuine and whether the candidate satisfies the remaining educational and eligibility requirements.
Yet the material now points to certificates connected to events whose existence is questioned, disputed placements, mismatches between primary and backup certificates and doubts over the authority issuing or signing certificates.
The demand is therefore straightforward: for every Sports Quota appointment, disclose the candidate, sport, competition, date, achievement, issuing association, official results, backup certificate and verification authority.
A genuine certificate should withstand such verification easily.
The rules themselves changed dramatically
The policy timeline adds another layer.
For more than a decade, G.O.Ms.No.74 of 2012 required Sports Quota candidates to clear an eligibility test. On 19 April 2025, G.O.Ms.No.4 and G.O.Ms.No.47 changed the framework and permitted recruitment under the Sports Quota without a written competitive examination. After the recruitment was completed, G.O.Ms.No.23, 25 and 56 in May 2026 restored an examination requirement for subsequent recruitment.
That sequence does not by itself prove manipulation. But politically and administratively, it demands an explanation.
Why was the examination requirement removed immediately before this recruitment? Who proposed the change? What assessment justified it? Why was the framework reversed after the recruitment cycle?
The government should release the complete file noting behind these decisions rather than asking the public to accept the policy changes on faith.
Merit versus access
The controversy becomes sharper when contrasted with candidates such as national-level archer Anigi Durgaiah, whose case has been repeatedly cited by YSRCP. The argument is that a genuine medal-winning sportsperson did not receive the expected appointment, while candidates with substantially lower sporting credentials or disputed eligibility passed through the system.
This is why the question is no longer merely whether Sports Quota recruitment is legally permissible. The issue is whether the quota was applied uniformly, transparently and according to its own priority structure.
Questions extend to the examination system
Sports Quota is only one part of the dispute.
The material also demands scrutiny of question-paper preparation, uploading, login access and the role of outsourced personnel. It asks who had access to confidential systems, who created and uploaded question banks and whether functions that should normally provide institutional checks were concentrated under limited administrative control.
The PIL material previously placed on record similarly states that confidential examination functions were handled by contractual and outsourced personnel and questions the concentration of examination functions under SCERT.
Then there is the Naveen episode: an outsourced employee associated with the system appeared at the top of an initial merit list and was absent from the revised selection outcome. That circumstance is not, by itself, proof of a question-paper leak. But it is precisely the kind of anomaly that requires forensic examination of access logs, user credentials, question-bank activity and server records.
Job-deal recordings deepen the suspicion
Another strand is the emergence of recorded conversations relating to negotiations for Sports Quota teacher posts. The source asks who participated in those calls, what amounts were demanded, whose appointments were promised and what investigation followed.
Viewed separately, an eligibility lapse, a questionable sports certificate or a suspicious phone conversation might each be explained as an isolated incident.
Viewed together, they form a pattern that cannot be settled by departmental assurances.
This is not a fight against genuine teachers
The political position being articulated by YSRCP is significant: the demand is not to punish candidates who secured appointments genuinely on merit. It is to identify cases where rules were bent, certificates were invalid, eligibility was absent or appointments were influenced through an improper process.
That distinction matters. A credible investigation should protect lawful selections while isolating irregular ones.
Why a CBI probe has become the central demand
The government says Mega DSC was transparent. YSRCP says the accumulating records show otherwise.
The way to resolve that dispute is not through rallies, political counter-attacks or competing press conferences. It is through records.
Publish every relevant TET score. Publish every Sports Quota certificate. Release the official competition results used for verification. Preserve server logs and question-bank access records. Produce the merit-cum-roster data. Explain every candidate removed after verification. Investigate every job-deal recording.
YSRCP has already placed a representation seeking a CBI investigation, supported by Government Orders, merit records, Sports Quota analysis and other documentary material.
The question confronting the Chandrababu–Lokesh government is therefore increasingly difficult to avoid: if Mega DSC–2025 was genuinely transparent, why resist an investigation capable of giving the government the clean chit it claims it deserves?
When one candidate can pass several stages and become a teacher without meeting the prescribed TET threshold, the issue is no longer merely that candidate.
The issue is the system that cleared him.
