Staff Selection Commission (SSC), the organization under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions headed by the Prime Minister himself, conducts examinations for Group B and C jobs of the Union government. The organization is facing backlash from students for its efficiencies as it has not cleared any vacancy since 2017.
The backlash against the government jobs recruitment agencies like the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB), and Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) is due to years of delay in their recruitment process. The students in various cities which are considered hubs for preparation for government exams protested against the delay in recruitment and are running campaigns against these agencies on social media.
“SSC is not giving joining to 2017 CGL exam students, not publishing results of 2018 exams, not conducting the exam of 2019, and hasn’t published the notification of 2020 exams,” a student wrote. “If the government is saying that life won’t stop due to COVID and they are conducting JEE, NEET exams, then what is the problem in SSC? Now Railway, NTPC notification had come in February 2019…still they couldn’t arrange the agency to conduct the exam,” another student said.
This is the right time for the government to reform the recruitment agencies and clamp down on their corruption. Almost every year, one or the other exam papers get leaked from these agencies and the recruitment process reaches to courts. In courts, the cases revolve around the hierarchy of the judiciary and the final decisions take years. Therefore, the recruitment process which is supposed to be completed in one year does not get done even in three to four years.
The inefficiency of SSC in its primary job, that is the recruitment of candidates, is alarming, and therefore, the agency needs a structural overhaul. The government has already set up a National Recruitment Agency (NRA) to conduct a Common Eligibility Test (CET) for the candidates based on educational qualification. Therefore, irrespective of the agency through which a candidate is giving the exam, the preliminary exam would be common for all 10th, 12th, and graduation level vacancies.
The Modi government already scrapped interviews for Group B and Group C exams, and now Preliminary exams would be conducted by NRA. Therefore, organizations like SSC, RRB, and IBPS would be left with only mains exams. The NRA is expected to start conducting exams from next year and the burden of these will be lower, and then, the government would expect efficient and transparent exams from these agencies in the coming years.
If these agencies fail to conduct the Mains exams transparently, the government might transfer even mains recruitment to NRA, once the agencies build capacity and have experience of a few years. So, the government is undertaking necessary steps and it only needs to accelerate the process so that the burden on the candidates could be minimized and their problems could be solved.
