Maharashtra Public Service exam aspirants protest against vacancy cuts & rushed exam timeline

First, there was a drastic reduction in PSI Vacancies despite an RTI response revealing nearly 3,000 vacancies. “The Combine Group B exam 2024 notification initially had 441 vacancies for PSI, but due to elections, the notification was delayed. A fresh notification was published later, which currently has 261 vacancies for PSI. While an RTI response indicates there are 2,959 PSI vacancies. This abrupt reduction in vacancies will affect aspirants who have been preparing for years. We demand to reinstate the previous call of 441 PSI vacancies,” said Anil Devkate.

Secondly, candidates expressed concerns about the revised MPSC State Services Preliminary exam results released on March 29. “The MPSC State Services Preliminary Exam 2024 was postponed four times and was later held on December 1, last year. In this case, socially and economically backward class (SEBC) candidates opted for the economically weaker section’s (EWS) reservation, which was challenged in the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT) as appellants believed that SEBC candidates were unreasonably benefited at the expense of other EWS candidates. After the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election results, a separate SEBC quota was introduced,” said Prabhu Shinde.

“MPSC released a revised prelim result on March 29, referring the new SEBC quota, which included 318 additional candidates under EWS, that got excluded in the March 12 prelims result, as their place was occupied by SEBC candidates. With the mains exam starting from April 26, the time left for newly qualified candidates to prepare is disproportionate,” added Shinde.

In response to the demand for postponement of the state services exam, candidates met Sharad Pawar, NCP (SP) chief, on Saturday. “Pawar saheb has listened to our demands and has scheduled an appointment on April 15 with Rajnish Seth, MPSC Chairperson, to take a final call about the said demand to postpone the main exam dates by at least 45 days from the date of prelim revised result declaration,” said Sunil Gadhave.

“Additionally, some candidates were allowed to enter for the Prelims exam by using the old hall ticket. Many of them have qualified, while other aspirants with more marks than the cutoff have been declared unqualified. We suspect transparency may have been compromised, and the commission must take note of this,” added Gadhave.

“MPSC should follow the way UPSC conducts the exam with promptness as per the schedule come what may. In MPSC, the average time required for even a clerical level post is over 2.5 years. The 2022 State services qualified Class 1 officers are called for training in 2025. It is frustrating to prepare for so long being unemployed despite being qualified,” added Devkate.