After Flipkart, now L&T leaves students in a lurch, as tech arm withdraws 1,500 job offers

Larsen & Toubro Infotech has withdrawn offer letters of 1,500 students citing poor performance in an assessment test, 18 months after they were offered jobs. The students, left in a lurch, have gone on a hunger strike, reported CNN News18. TheNewsMinute reported that a batch of 6,500 students who sat for placements between September to November 2014 in Chennai were provided offer of intent letters. Although they were not legally binding, L&T followed up time and again with the students. They even received congratulatory e-mail’s that said that they were a part of L&T Infotech, the report added. “The struggle is much more and it is unexplainable. We took loans to study in that particular college just to get placed. We are now in a position that we cannot answer the banks and they are sending us letter on a daily basis. They (L&T) kept us engaged in doing some work or the other and kept telling us not to panic, we will be giving you the joining date and that increased our hopes”, CNN News18 quoted a student as saying. [caption id=“attachment_2805748” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Logo. Image source - Wikimedia Commons[/caption] The situation keeps getting murkier, according to the report by TheNewsMinute. A batch of students were asked to sit for an assessment test, which tested them on ongoing projects or things someone already working at L&T Infotech would know. Their hall tickets contained ‘if shortlisted’ condition that increased the confusion of the students. They were told that it was an assessment and not a recruitment drive. This move has seriously affected the placement records of colleges, who projected the placements of these students in 2014, and they haven’t worked for a single day at the organisation. This is not the first time, however, that students have been left in a lurch. Flipkart deferred the joining dates of 18 students citing restructuring, which has led IIM-Ahmedabad to tweak its norms for recruiters. Despite waiting for 18 months, these students have not got an offer yet and believe they have been duped. L&T is expected to issue a formal statement today, the TheNewsMinute report added.