VIJAYAWADA: The Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) is planning to merge Group I, II and III and in their place introduce two groups based on category of posts in various government departments. All executive posts will be formed as Group I and non-executive posts Group II. There would not be Group III posts any more if the plans of the Commission get the State government's nod.
The Commission will soon send the proposal to the government for approval. The idea behind the proposal is to have a seamless recruitment process.
According to APPSC officials, since the educational qualifications required for jobs under the three groups are the same most of the candidates apply for all the three recruitment examinations. This is resulting in a cumbersome process as a candidate selected for jobs under more than one group, opts for only one of them. This leaves vacancy for the posts in other groups unfilled. "If a candidate, after clearing the test, opts Group II post over that of Group III, the post in the latter category remains vacant. The guidelines bar the Commission from filling the vacancy with other candidates. This forces the APPSC to notify the vacancies and undertake another recruitment process,'' an official said.
In 2016, the APPSC issued notification for filling 982 Group II and 1055 Group III posts and conducted recruitment tests . Over 400 candidates who cleared both the tests opted for Group II posts. As a result, almost 400 Group III posts, for which the authorities issued appointment orders to the candidates, were left vacant. "The vacant post cannot be transferred to the next qualified candidate as per the rules of APPSC," said an official.
To address the issue, the Commission has decided to merge the groups and have two categories of posts - executive and non-executive. All executive posts are recruited through Group I exam and Group II test is for filling both executive and non-executive jobs and Group III for only non-executive posts. Now, the proposal is to bring all executive posts under Group I, where the candidates would be required to take descriptive exam. Similarly, all the non-executive posts would be recruited under Group II through an objective paper.
Speaking on the proposal, APPSC Chairman Uday Bhaskar said, "We have proposed to merge the Groups into two to prevent a large number of backlog vacancies. Everytime, almost 20 percent of the total posts are being left vacant due to flawed options. Even though we merge the Groups into two, the candidates will apply for both, but the backlog vacancies can be reduced. Soon this proposal will be sent to State government for approval. If it is approved, we will implement it from the next recruitment process."
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APPSC is planning to put up the case studies of the court proceedings in the public domain and on their website, in which the judgement came in favour of the commission. With these case studies, if any candidate feels they happened a mistake with the commission and wants to seek the court, they can refer these case studies and then proceed for further action. As of now, there are almost 400 cases that are pending in the both High court and Supreme court against the APPSC.
APPSC Chairman Uday Bhaskar said, "There are some advocates, who try to mislead the candidate with false assurances that the court judgement will be in favour to them. To avoid this, we want to put up the case studies online so that the candidate can refer similar cases and understand whether the case will be favour to them or not. This would help us to reduce the number of the fresh cases against us."