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Journalism of Courage
A DAY before the UPSC is set to notify dates for the 2017 preliminary entrance exams, a group of 50 civil service aspirants gathered outside the Lok Kalyan Marg Metro station and protested against the Centre for being ‘elitist’ and ruining their chances by ‘experimenting’ on them. According to the protesters, the government should give them the chance to take the exams a few more times because of the slew of changes it made in the examination pattern over the past five years.
In 2011, the government had introduced CSAT — a paper that tests logical reasoning and aptitude with a compulsory section on English. Soon after, the main papers saw an overhaul. Then in 2015, CSAT was made a qualifying paper.
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“This government claims it is nationalist… They initially supported us in our struggle till they formed the government. Now, four important years of our lives have been ruined… We have been experimented upon like guinea pigs,” Raghav Katiyan, an aspirant leading the protests, said. Shivam Kumar, the son of a farmer from Bihar, has unsuccessfully attempted to clear the exam five times now. But as he turns 31 this March, Kumar will never be able to sit for the exam again.
“What will I go back and tell my poor father who has spent so much on educating me and funding my living in Delhi for the past five years? I was the first in my family to come this far but it came to nothing,” he said.
Read | UPSC Civil Services 2017: Official notification released, check eligibility and exam pattern here
Another aspirant, Saransh Tripathi, said, “We met a senior BJP leader and asked that we be given extra attempts as compensation… But he said someone always has to pay the price for change and experimentation. In this case, it was our batch, and those a couple of years before and after us.”
Some protesters who planned to march to the PM’s residence were detained by the New Delhi district police for a few hours.
