Written by: Faisal Fareed
3 min readLucknowSep 5, 2013 05:06 AM IST
First published on: Sep 5, 2013 at 05:06 AM IST
Set up to provide free guidance and coaching to civil services aspirants from Other Backward Class (OBC),Scheduled Class (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST),seven coaching centres run by state’s Social Welfare Department have failed to produce even a single IAS or PCS officer.
Most of these coaching centres have been functioning for long — the one at Allahabad set up in 1979 being the oldest.
These centres provide coaching mainly for civil services,banking,judicial services and other lower subordinate entrance examinations.
While the teachers are hired on temporary basis from private institutes,no fees is charged from the students who are also provided free hostel accommodation and food.
The classes are held in two batches — each of five-month duration — and the aspirants are admitted locally by the centre in-charge,the criteria being minimum eligibility to appear in competitive examinations and parents’ total annual income not exceeding Rs 60,000.
Lucknow has one coaching centre each for boys and girls,set up in 1997,with the total intake being 300 male and 150 female students.
Half of the seats here are reserved for OBC students while 45 per cent seats are filled by SC students and remaining 5 per cent by the ST students.
No student from these two centres could clear civil services examination,though 71 cleared other competitive examinations.
Except Lucknow,all the other centres offer coaching only to SC and ST students.
The Allahabad centre offers coaching facility for PCS (J) entrance examination.
The oldest such centre,with an intake of 50 students,it has a slightly better record with 42 selections in PCS (J). Another centre at Varanasi,which was set up in 2008 and has an intake of 200 students,also could not produce any IAS officer.
The coaching centre at Aligarh,set up in 2009 and with an intake of 200 students,is yet to produce an IAS officer as do the centres at Agra and Hapur,with intakes of 180 and 100 students each respectively.
Officials in the Social Welfare Directorate,however,are unfazed.
“Civil services preliminary examination is one of the toughest. It is very difficult for any student to qualify in the first attempt. It is even more difficult for those who are enrolled at our centres,considering their educational background,” an official said,while pleading anonymity.
He,however,said some students do clear the examinations after repeated attempts,but the department does not have any record.
“At least they are groomed for other smaller competitive examinations,” he added.
Bhupendra S Choudhary,director of social welfare agreed that the results have been not up to mark so far but blamed it on the lesser number of seats up for grabs.
“It is true that our results are quite disappointing.” “The number of seats (on offer through the competitive examinations) are also very few,so success rate is not very high. But we are now appointing officers to keep a tab on these centres,” he said.
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