Common eligibility test for Central govt jobs from 2022

The first common eligibility test (CET) to recruit non-technical group B and C government staff has been delayed due to Covid-19 pandemic and is unlikely to be held by the end of this year, a senior Union minister said on Tuesday.

The CET will be conducted by the newly constituted National Recruitment Agency (NRA) to screen/shortlist candidates for above mentioned government jobs, selections for which were earlier done through the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) and Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS), union minister for personnel, pensions and grievances Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday.

“This unique initiative undertaken with the personal intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to screen and shortlist candidates for recruitment to Central government jobs was scheduled to take off with the first such test before the end of this year, but is likely to get delayed on account of the Covid pandemic, he said,” Singh said at the launch of e-Book Civil List-2021 of IAS officers.

He said the CET will bring “ease of recruitment” to young job aspirants and be a “great boon” to those that live in remote areas. “The NRA will be a multi-agency body which will conduct the common test to screen and shortlist candidates for Group-‘B’ and ‘C’ (non-technical) posts,” he said. “The most significant feature of this reform is that every district in the country will have at least one examination centre which would greatly enhance access to the candidates living in far-flung areas.”

Singh also highlighted other reforms under taken by the government since 2014, such as doing away with the practice of getting documents attested by a gazetted officer and replacing it with self-attestation and mandatory three-month stint for Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers as assistant secretaries with the Central government in the beginning of their career.

The government has also launched ‘Mission Karamyogi’ to streamline training and competency building of civil servants through an HR council comprising select union ministers, chief ministers, international leaders and civil servants who will choose the ‘right person for the right role’.

It is likely to be a major transition for the bureaucracy, as civil servants training will become a ‘continuous process’ and a dashboard will monitor and audit the capacity building scheme, and a report will be submitted annually to ascertain its success.