‘Long gap between exam, results breeds graft’
LUCKNOW: Chandra Bhushan Paliwal (63), a retired IAS officer of 1981 batch, took over on Monday as the new chairman of the Uttar Pradesh State Subordinate Service Commission (UPSSSC), an organization that is mandated to conduct competitive examinations for appointments to various Group C posts in different government departments.
The commission was lying defunct since its then chairman and members appointed by the Samajwadi Party government quit after the change of regime in March last year. The reconstitution of the commission is expected to set in motion the procedure for filling more than 40,000 posts. A low profile bureaucrat enjoying the image of an upright officer, Paliwal during an interview talks about his priorities to make the recruitment process credible and transparent.
What are the challenges that you think you face?
Restoring credibility to the recruitment process and doing an image makeover of the commission by conducting various competitive examinations in a fair and transparent manner is both a priority and a challenge.
What is your action plan for that?
There are quite a few things we would like to do. First, we will make more use of technology in the recruitment process minimizing human intervention; second the commission will prepare its own question bank rather than depend solely on the questions provided by private agencies that the commission engages for the purpose; and third, we will also revisit the way we engage the private agencies in the recruitment process as well as review the work allocation of the commission’s staff with a view to eliminate vested interests, if any.
What else?
One more important step in the same direction will be to compress as much as possible the gap between the conduct of an examination and declaration of the final results. A long gap, I feel enhances chances of corruption creeping into the process. We will also sit with the NIC to discuss as to what other measures can be taken to plug in the loopholes.
Do you think elimination of provision for interview for Group C and D posts by the government will have a check on corruption?
Certainly, because this deprives the recruitment boards of the leeway or the discretion that they could misuse to unduly favour a candidate during the interview.
Do you think a candidate’s experience of the recruitment board also determines his personality in future?
There are broadly two excuses for one to resort to corruption after entering into a government job.
First, many employees start indulging in corruption not by choice but by compulsion and they quote low salaries as the reason. But after the sixth and seventh pay commissions, the government employees cannot make this excuse because now the government is paying more than the private sector.
Second, some employees justify their corruption saying they are only trying to recover the money they spent as bribe to get the job. Here, the image of the recruitment agency becomes important. If a candidate passes through an honest and transparent recruitment process, it will leave a healthy impression on his mind. For the employees who are habitually corrupt, there are different agencies to deal with them.
When do you intend to finally start the recruitment ending the long wait for the jobless?
I think we will be in a position to place first advertisement in a week or two. We have asked the government departments to send their requirement. We have already received requisite for around 15000 posts while the requisite for 24000 other posts was received earlier. But the commission would like to vet all these requisites for recruitment before it advertises the posts.