IT Correspondent
New Delhi, Aug 20:
The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved a proposal to set up a National Recruitment Agency (NRA) for conducting the proposed Common Eligibility Test (CET) for all non-gazetted job vacancies in central government and public sector banks.
The Union Cabinet has approved setting up of NRC to conduct CET and the this decision will benefit job seeking youth of the country,” Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar said. The NRA will conduct computer based CET for job-seeking youth of the country. Every year, around 2.5 to 3 crore aspirants take up different examinations conducted by different recruitment agencies for nearly 1.25 lakh government jobs.
Following the setting up of NRA, the exams conducted by three agencies: banking personnel selection agency IBPS, railway recruitment board RRB and the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) will be unified. Now, the job aspirants will be required to appear for a single, online CET with the test scores remaining valid for three years, subject to the upper age limit. The hiring of Group-B (non-gazetted), Group-C (non-technical) and clerical posts in the government along with various equivalent recruitment in public sector banks will be done through CET. NRA will conduct preliminary examinations for all these recruitment. There will be no bar on the number of attempts. Candidates need to qualify this CET to apply for higher level of examination to any recruitment agencies.
The multi-agency body will conduct a separate CET each for the three levels of gradate, higher secondary (12th pass) and the matriculate (10th pass) candidates. Based on the screening done at the CET score level, final selection for recruitment shall be made through separate specialised tiers (II, III etc) of examination which shall be conducted by the respective recruitment agencies.
The curriculum for this test would be common as would be the standard. This would greatly ease the burden of candidates who are at present required to prepare for each of the examinations separately as per different curriculum. Candidates would have the facility of registering on a common portal and give a choice of centres. Based on availability, they would be allotted centres. The CET would be available in a number of languages. This would greatly facilitate people from different parts of the country to take the exam and have an equal opportunity of being selected.
The government has sanctioned Rs.1,517.57 crore for NRA and the expenditure will be undertaken over a period of three years. Apart from setting up the NRA, costs will be incurred for setting up examination infrastructure in the 117 aspirational districts.
“Cabinet Decision to set up NRA to conduct CET for preliminary selection to various Government vacancies is a revolutionary reform. This will bring ease of recruitment, ease of selection and thereby ease of living for aspirant candidates,” Union Minister Jitendra Singh said.
The NRA was first proposed by the government in the union budget 2020. The agency will be an independent, professional, specialist organisation and will conduct an exam, which would be known as the CET, for selection to government jobs, it had said then.
