Telangana public service commission braces to hold exams to fill over 80,000 vacancies

Speaking to indianexpress.com, commission chairman B Janardhan Reddy said, “The commission is gearing up to simplify, modify, reform, and reduce the drudgery involved in the application process as well as to improve the efficacy of the system.”

With no job notification yet in sight even after a week of the chief minister’s statements in the Assembly, impatience is building among job aspirants. On Wednesday, several NSUI activists were taken into preventive custody as they protested and attempted to lay siege to the commission’s headquarters in Hyderabad.

Process set in motion, more clarity in a week

According to the commission chairman, the aim is to issue job notifications in a month or two. Job aspirants will get about 30 to 45 days to apply. Exams will be held two or three months later so that the commission gets time to make logistical arrangements. Reddy said more clarity would emerge in a week.

Before issuing notifications, the finance department will consult each department on details such as a new roster system, vacancies, reservation norms, experience criteria, upper age limits, etc for the commission to scrutinise the facts based on qualification rules for each job to avoid any ambiguity in the future. “The TSPSC will do a thorough scrutiny of the department-wise indents. It is a basic recheck so that it would not go for a spin after notifications have been issued. Once departments and the commission agree on the indents, we will issue a web notification with a call for application,” Reddy said.

Futile if similar job positions are not clubbed together

The scale of the recruitment drive, with a need to fill over 80,000 vacancies at one go, has added more dimensions to the process. “It makes sense to club job positions across departments if they are common in nature. For example, the requirements of junior assistant and stenographer posts will be the same for all departments. So they can be clubbed. Similarly, for the posts in the engineering wings of roads and building, public health, panchayat raj departments as well as the water board and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation can all be clubbed together, or else the same one lakh people will take different exams for each department,” Reddy added.

Elaborating further, he said that “conducting exams separately for similar positions in different departments may lead to further vacancies as the same candidate may get selected in two departments. It will be a futile exercise”.

Lakhs of job aspirants are expected to apply once notifications are issued. The commission expects 14 lakh people to apply for a clerical post whereas posts such as geologist or a Hindi pandit may attract only a few hundred applications. As per the chief minister’s announcement, there are 39,829 vacancies to be filled via direct recruitment at the district level, 18,866 at the zonal level, and 13,170 at the multi-zonal level. Similarly, there are 503 vacancies under group 1, 582 under group 2, 1,373 under group 3, and 9,168 vacancies under group 4 to be filled.

Definition of a local candidate

With the new presidential order that provides for reservation of up to 95 per cent for local candidates at district, zonal, and multi-zonal levels, Reddy said the definition of a local candidate had changed. Only about 60 to 70 per cent of jobs were reserved for locals earlier. As per the new order, whether an applicant is a local candidate is decided based on where he or she has studied from Class 1 to 7. “Since we have not recorded details of where an applicant studied from Class 1 to 7, candidates can start updating their one-time registration (OTR) once when notifications are issued. All this can take a month,” he said. A candidate can apply for as many vacancies as he desires based on the OTR.

For instance, a candidate is eligible for a Hyderabad district or zonal cadre post if he or she had studied Classes 4 to 7 in Hyderabad. “But if one has studied in seven different districts from classes 1 to 7, they will be considered a local of the district where they studied Class 7. Suppose a candidate studied in two districts each between Classes 1 and 6 and then studied a year in Hyderabad, they will not be considered a local of Hyderabad but that of the district where they did most of their schooling. For this purpose, updating OTR is necessary,” Reddy explained.

The commission felt it was possible to conduct online examinations when there were fewer candidates. “After examinations, the time required for evaluation depends on whether the exam was held online or offline. It is possible to release results in six months for some posts where exams are conducted online. It may take six to eight months if exams are conducted offline for some other posts. When it involves preliminary and mains exams and interviews, it may take one year,” he added.

According to him, the minutest details are being considered to avoid confusion. “We have added a compulsory three-minute wait time for preview before the submission of an application to help those candidates who use the services of a data entry operator at mee-Seva centres.”