BHUBANESWAR : The notification of the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) for state civil services examination of 2025 by excluding the Group A services like Odisha Administrative Service (OAS), Odisha Finance Service (OFS) and Odisha Revenue Service (ORS) has raised serious questions over inter-departmental coordination in the government while fuelling resentment among aspirants across the state.
The OPSC on December 31 notified 314 vacancies in seven services, with 104 posts reserved for women. The only Group A service, Odisha Police Service (OPS), has 12 vacancies. Group B services like the Odisha Taxation and Accounts Service and Odisha Labour Service have vacancies of 176 and 98 posts respectively, while Odisha Skill Development and Employment Service, Odisha Tourism Service, Odisha Excise Service and Odisha Cooperative Service have 10, eight, six and four vacancies respectively.
Over one third of the posts notified by the OPSC belong to vacancies of previous years. According to the notification, 115 vacancies have not been filled up from previous years mostly because those selected have not joined or left the job for better opportunities. The highest backlog of 80 posts is from the Odisha Labour Service. Sources in the OPSC, however, clarified that it does not decide on the number of posts while issuing notification and depends on the vacancy list provided by the General Administration and Public Grievance department.
Official sources maintained that separate cadre rules for different services have led to such a situation. The Finance and Revenue departments do not agree on the model service rules of the General Administration department which is a set of guidelines for cadre management like recruitment, promotion and posting. Besides, feeder services like the ORS and OTAS have their separate service rules.
As a result, Revenue department has stopped promotions, choking creation of entry level posts. It is an issue between GA, Finance and Revenue departments which can only be resolved after intervention from the top level, they said.
Advocate Rajat Kumar Mishra, a recruitment process reformer, said it is very unfortunate that a person securing number one rank will not get opportunity to achieve his dream of becoming OAS, OFS or even ORS, thanks to the functioning of the government departments.
Stating that such a situation is very unusual and surprising, Mishra said the chief minister who is the head of the GA department should intervene to resolve this issue at the earliest.