Cabinet approves new agency to streamline govt recruitment

NEWDELHI: The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its nod to set up a National Recruitment Agency (NRA), which will conduct a common eligibility test (CET) for all non-gazetted posts including Group B and Group C (non-technical) jobs, setting in motion a major move aimed at streamlining government recruitment. Under the new system, around 25 million aspirants, who appear for separate, multiple examinations to join more than 125,000 government jobs every year, will have to take a single online exam whose score will be valid for a period of three years and will serve as a preliminary screening mark for all eligible posts across various central government agencies.

The creation of NRA was first proposed by the government in Union Budget 2020.

“The #Nationalrecruitmentagency will prove to be a boon for crores of youngsters. Through the Common Eligibility Test, it will eliminate multiple tests and save precious time as well as resources. This will also be a big boost to transparency,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted soon after Wednesday’s Cabinet announcement.

NRA, which will have representatives from the ministry of railways, ministry of finance/ department of financial services, the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) and the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS), has been envisioned as “a specialist body bringing the state of the art technology and best practices to the field of central government recruitment”, according to a press release by the government.

“At present, candidates seeking government jobs have to appear for separate examinations conducted by multiple recruiting agencies for various posts, for which similar eligibility conditions have been prescribed. Candidates have to pay fee to multiple recruiting agencies and also have to travel long distances for appearing in various exams,” the release said.

“These multiple recruitment examinations are a burden on the candidates, as also on the

respective recruitment agencies, involving avoidable/repetitive expenditure, law and order/ security related issues and venue related problems. A common eligibility Test would enable these candidates to appear once and apply to any or all of these recruitment agencies for the higher level of examination. This would indeed be a boon to all the candidates,” it added.

Officials aware of the matter that under the new CET system, no limit on the numbers of attempts will be imposed on the candidates taking the exam. They added that the test will be conducted for the graduate, higher secondary (12th pass) and the matriculate (10th pass) levels with a common curriculum, and will serve as a screening system based on which candidates can apply for jobs in different government agencies. Based on their CET score, the candidates may have to take additional examinations at the agency level.

The government said it will also work towards enhancing examination infrastructure across the country with special focus on 117 aspirational districts.