THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Candidates appearing for the examination for the post of Assistant Central Intelligence Officer (ACIO) in Intelligence Bureau on February 20 are a worried lot. The reason: the state PSC has scheduled its exam for numerous posts, for which matriculation is the basic qualification, in four phases and one of the dates clashes with the date of the ACIO exam conducted by the union government.
The common preliminary exam of the PSC was slated to be held in December last year. However, it was postponed in the wake of Covid spread and rescheduled to February 20, February 25, March 6 and March 13. PSC had rescheduled the exam into four phases due to the difficulty in maintaining Covid protocol as the number of qualified applicants was nearly 16 lakh and arranging that many numbers of exam centres were not possible.
“The notification of the ACIO exam was issued many months ago in which the date was fixed as February 20. With the PSC scheduling one of its preliminary examinations on that date, many candidates who are appearing for the ACIO exam would not be able to attend it,” said Arun Sivarajan, a job aspirant.
According to aspirants, the state PSC should have realised that an important Central government examination is slated for February 20 and avoided that date while rescheduling the exams, originally planned in December. They have now urged the PSC to postpone the preliminary exam slated for February 20.
Meanwhile, a senior official of the PSC told TNIE that the exam on February 20 would have the least number of applicants compared to all other phases. “The first phase exam would have just over 2 lakh of the nearly 16 lakh applicants. The exams, with the higher number of applicants, are slated for subsequent phases,” the official said. He also indicated that rescheduling the exam would be tough given the tight exam schedule in February.