UPSC selectees get offer after a year

How will you react if you crack a competitive examination and receive offer letter after a year. It sounds scandalous. But it is true.

Several candidates who cracked the Central services examinations have received their offer letters after a year, making a mockery of the selection process and leaving aspirants frustrated.  

A parliamentary committee has pulled up the Central ministries for wreaking havoc with the lives of the candidates selected through tough examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). 

The panel findings are silent on specific instances of hold-up. However, the delays have not affected higher civil services such as IAS, IPS, IFS and others.

In its 51st report of standing committee on personnel, public grievance, law and justice, tabled in Rajya Sabha, the UPSC had taken up this issue that selected candidates should not be made to wait for years for the receipt of offers of appointment from ministries concerned.

“The committee is happy to note that UPSC has taken cognizance of this weak area in government’s functioning. The committee recommends that the ministries concerned should take serious note of such delays….,” the report on demands for grants (2012-13) of the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions remarked.

The report has emphasised that many candidates shortlisted by UPSC secure placement elsewhere due to babus sitting over the results. In the process, they are not “available for appointment under the government, thus, rendering the whole exercise of selection of such candidates futile and infructuous,” criticised the report. The standing committee has advised that a mechanism be put in place to ensure offers of appointments are issued to applicants immediately.  

The report has also expressed concern over the UPA government’s refusal to provide ‘financial autonomy’ to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) despite the Act governing the premier corruption watchdog envisaging a complete independence from the state. The CVC had raised this issue with the parliamentary panel that their expenditure is still being met out of the Consolidated Fund of India.

The committee said that necessary assistance should be provided to the CVC so that it “emerges as the principal vigilance machinery in the country, equipped to provide efficient administrative vigilance in all the organizations which come under its fold”.