Indore: The recruitment process of Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission (MPPSC), the state’s biggest government recruitment agency, is in suspended animation even as job aspirants see no possibility of much-awaited civil service examination even in next three months.
Their apprehensions hinge on MPPSC’s failure to issue a new recruitment calendar for 2019 despite passing off nearly more than 20 days for poll code to be lifted.
The agency had released recruitment calendar-2019 (also called examination and interview calendar) on December 31, 2018, giving schedules for notifications, examinations, interviews and results.
As per calendar, notifications for three major examinations including state service, forest service and engineering services were to be issued in first two months of 2019.
According to calendar, the notifications for state service exam and state forest service exam were to be issued in January and preliminary exams were to be held in April whereas notification for state engineering services was to be issued in February and exam be held in May.
But the notifications were not issued even as model code of conduct was invoked for Lok Sabha elections on March 6. Resultantly, the entire calendar had become redundant.
At that time, the MPPSC had come in for flak for poor planning of the calendar as preliminary examination of state services and engineering services were fixed in April and May despite the fact that the elections were expected in those months.
MPPSC secretary Renu Pant said recruitment calendar will be released only after notification for change in upper limit age for candidates by state government.
The state cabinet last week had passed a proposal for fixing the upper limit of MPPSC exams at 35 for both state and outside candidates. Earlier, the upper limit for state’s candidates was 40 and outside students was 28.
While it is not clear when notification will be issued, what is sure is that recruitment process for state service exam is not going to be completed this year. It may stretch till July next year.
Much-awaited SSE exam
Though the job aspirants are waiting for entire exam calendar, the most eagerly awaited is state service preliminary exam in which nearly 2.5 lakh candidate participate.
The exam notification was to be released in February and exam be conducted in April but things did not go as planned. The candidates believe that the exam could not be conducted before October even if the notification for it is released in first week of July.
