BENGALURU: The state government has gone on a recruitment spree, issuing a series of job notifications to fill vacancies across various departments, within two weeks of issuing an order to expedite the recruitment for more than 72,000 posts. During the past two weeks, at least 15 different notifications have been issued to fill the posts.
The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has invited online applications for direct recruitment of 320 teaching posts in Morarji Desai, Kittur Rani Chennamma, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Indira Gandhi residential schools and pre-university colleges functioning under the Karnataka Residential Educational Institutions Society (KREIS).
In another major drive, applications have been invited for 560 land surveyor posts in the Department of Survey, Settlement and Land Records under the Residual Parent Cadre (RPC).
The Revenue Department has also invited applications to fill 505 village administrative officer (VAO) posts, including 67 posts under the Hyderabad-Karnataka Cadre quota.
The Karnataka Excise Department has invited applications to fill 1,207 posts of constables and excise sub-inspectors (ESIs).
The forest department has invited applications to fill 750 forest observer posts. The KEA has already invited applications to fill 3,395 Karnataka police civil constable posts.
The fresh notifications come after the state government initiated measures to accelerate direct recruitment across departments.
Addl chief secretaries to oversee recruitments
The responsibility of expediting recruitment to posts in 17 departments has been assigned to Additional Chief Secretary and Development Commissioner Uma Mahadevan. Another additional chief secretary has been entrusted with overseeing and completing direct recruitment to vacant posts in 34 departments.
Government recruitment in Karnataka had been stalled because of litigation in courts over reservation and no recruitment had been done since 2023. The government had also relaxed the age limit by up to five years as there were delays in recruitment since 2019 because of Covid. Around 2.5 lakh posts are vacant in various departments and no major recruitment has been made in the last two years.
A senior Congress leader on anonymity said that in the party election manifesto in 2023, Congress had promised to fill vacant government posts within a year if the party comes to power. “We could not do that for various reasons, including the reservation issue, lack of finances as a large amount was being spent on guarantee schemes and others. We have less than two years in power and there is pressure to fill these posts. There have been flash protests over lack of recruitment,” he said.
