Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has released 796 vacancies for the civil services examination and from this year, there will be no upper-age relaxation for Jammu and Kashmir candidates, according to a notification issued on February 12. However, the age relaxation for other categories remains the same, reported The Indian Express.
Till last year, the upper age limit (32 for general category) was relaxable for up to a maximum of five years if a candidate domiciled in the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir during the period from January 1, 1980, to December 31, 1989. However, in the UPSC CSE notification, there is no special mention of any age relaxation, said the report.
With effect from October 31, 2019, the Jammu and Kashmir state has been bifurcated into a union territory.
To appear for UPSC CSE, the candidate must have attained “the age of 21 years and must not have attained the age of 32 years on the 1st of August, 2020 i.e., he must have been born not earlier than 2nd August, 1988 and not later than 1st August, 1999,” this year’s notification said.
In case the candidates belong to the reserved category, the upper age limit is relaxed for up to a maximum of five years for scheduled caste or a scheduled tribe category candidates and it is three years for those belonging to other backward classes (OBC).
Meanwhile, the government has advertised for only 796 despite facing a shortage of civil services personnel. After 2016, the vacancy numbers have remained low. This is not just the case with CSE but across all recruitment done through UPSC. The Parliament was recently informed that the number of recruitments in UPSC has declined in the last four years and reached its lowest of 2,352 in 2018-19
Every year, the UPSC releases application forms to recruit officers of Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Indian Police Service (IPS), Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS), Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS) and Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS), among others through the civil services examination.
This is probably the last time that the officers of IRTS, IRAS and IRPS are being recruited through the civil services examination after the amalgamation of the existing eight railway services into the one — Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS), officials said. It is likely that the commission will recruit IRMS officers from next year onwards, they said.
Moreover, in 2018, as many as 485 candidates — who had chosen Hindi or other regional languages as a mother tongue — were selected through civil services examination, according to data shared by the Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh in the Parliament. During the CSE 2017, UPSC recommended 1,056 aspirants for different services. Of them, 633 picked Hindi and other regional languages as their mother tongue, reported The Indian Express.
