Newly constituted UPESSC gears up for its maiden set of recruitment exams

The newly formed Uttar Pradesh Education Service Selection Commission (UPESSC) has kick-started preparations for conducting its maiden set of recruitment exams for 1,017 vacant posts of assistant professor in government-aided degree colleges across the state. It will also conduct exams to recruit trained graduate teachers and lecturers in government-aided intermediate colleges and high schools across the state.

The very first UPESSC chairman, Prof Kirti Pandey, in a missive on November 11, informed the district magistrates (DMs) that the commission plans to hold these recruitment exams between the third week of December 2024 and the second week of January 2025. The chairman also asked the DMs for a list of possible exam centers.

The commission is considering conducting these exams at the divisional and district headquarters each day in two shifts, says the missive, a copy of which is with HT.

While informing that the exam centers for these exams are to be set up in accordance with state government norms, the UPESSC chairman has sought a list of eligible institutions that can serve as exam centers in the respective districts, in the set format.

The Prayagraj-headquartered UPESSC was set up by the state government through a notification issued on August 21, 2023, and its detailed guidelines were issued on December 13, 2023.

Recruitment of teachers in higher education institutions was earlier carried out by the UP Higher Education Services Commission (UPHESC), while the UP Secondary Education Service Selection Board (UPSESSB) conducted recruitment of secondary school teachers. Now, the responsibilities of both these bodies have been merged into the new commission, set up by the state government with the vision that this integrated commission will prove useful in ensuring a time-bound, transparent, and uniform selection process.

It is worth mentioning that UPESSC, on October 24, declared its first-ever recruitment exam results by releasing the part-pending result of 13 posts of assistant professor of Chemistry. This recruitment was advertised and undertaken by the UPHESC before the formation of the UPESSC.

The UPHESC had conducted interviews from March 25, 2022, to April 6, 2022, for recruitment to 159 posts of assistant professor under advertisement No.-50. Out of these, 63 posts were unreserved, 14 posts were reserved for EWS, 43 posts for OBC, 38 posts for Scheduled Caste, and one post for the Scheduled Caste category. A total of 501 candidates were invited for interviews.

However, due to a matter related to this recruitment going to court, except for the selection result of these pending 13 posts (unreserved 7, EWS 2, OBC 4), the results for the remaining posts were declared on May 13, 2022. As the UPESSC was subsequently formed by merging the Higher Education Service Selection Commission and UPSESSB, the pending results were declared by the new commission.