The messages against the recently made changes by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) in probationary officer (PO) and management trainee (MT) exams went viral on Facebook, a social networking site, as many aspirants of the examination were against the move.
The IBPS recently issued notification for the common written examination (CWE) for the recruitment of probationary officers and management trainees (PO/MT) restricting the age limit to 28 years from the earlier 30 years in the general category and that the candidates must have scored 60 per cent marks in their graduation. Earlier a pass in graduation was enough to write the exam.
That means the aspiring candidates who did not fulfill the eligibility criteria will automatically be disqualified for competing for PO/MT posts for 21 nationalised banks which are taking the IBPS scores into consideration to fill the vacant posts in their organisation.
The State Bank of India (SBI) and its associated banks are conducting a separate examination and all the other remaining banks take IBPS scores. Some students have planned a protest on July 15 at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi against the IBPS decision.
There was a deluge of messages posted on the Facebook in support of the protest against the IBPS move and more than a dozen accounts are active on Facebook and couple of them having more than 2 lakh followers. Generally these accounts were useful to aspirants to clarify doubts about the exam pattern, mutually informing over the new recruitments. But now these Facebooks accounts have postings about the protests being organised by the aspirants across India.
An aspirant from Andhra Pradesh Anil said that he was disqualified to write the exam as he scored only 58 per cent in his degree exam. How can the IBPS tests the talent of a candidates based only on the percentage of marks scored in his graduation? he wondered. He said he secured first rank in the recently conducted BEd entrance test in Andhra Pradesh and many of the 25,000 candidates who appeared for the exam scored more marks than him in graduation. The IBPS made a few changes in the pattern of examination.
Earlier, the IBPS exam had five sections with 50 questions each from Reasoning, English language, Quantitative Aptitude, General Awareness (with special reference to Banking Industry) and Computer Knowledge. While English language carried half mark for each question, the remaining sections had one mark for each question.
Now restricting the number of questions to 200, the IBPS has reduced the number of questions to 40 in English Language and General Awareness sections and 20 in Computer Knowledge.
Reducing the exam time duration from the earlier 150 minutes to 120 minutes, the IBPS has also decided to remove English language eligibility test of 25-minute duration.