BENGALURU: The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) is conducting a competitive examination to fill over 1,600 Panchayath Development Officers (PDO) post, where a record number of candidates are appearing.
According to KEA, it has received over 3.5 lakh applications for 1,600 PDO posts at Gram Panchayaths across the state. Speaking to Express, a senior KEA official said, “This is the highest ever number of candidates we are witnessing. Even for the Common Entrance Test (CET), the number of candidates will be around 1.60 lakh.”
KEA is busy preparing to conduct the exams in December. “Though the date has not yet been finalised, it will be held in the second week of December. It will be a challenge even for us to conduct examination for such a huge number of candidates,” said the official. In September 2016, as per the government order, KEA issued notification to fill over 1,600 PDO posts across the state and October 15 was the last date to apply online.
Candidates with general degree from any of the recognised universities were eligible to apply.
As per the notification issued, the salary fixed by the government for this post ranges between Rs 20,000 to Rs 36,000. The age limit was 35 years for general merit candidates, 38 years for 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B categories and 40 years for SC and ST candidates.
Interestingly, the revenue generated by way of application fee for these posts is about Rs 15 crore.
After completing the seat allotment process for under-graduate/post-graduate professional courses, KEA takes up the responsibility of conducting competitive examinations for various government departments. Recently, an exam was conducted to fill some posts at BMRCL. “But this is for the first time we are conducting an examination for a huge number of candidates,” said KEA officials.