The Government on Wednesday asked the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to postpone the Civil Service Aptitude Test (CSAT) scheduled for August 24. It also assured the agitating civil services aspirants that it would look into their demands of scrapping CSAT sympathetically, following which scores of candidates protesting against the existing pattern of civil services examination ended their indefinite fast.
Amid concerns expressed by the Parliamentarians on Wednesday in the lok Sabha, the Centre also assured that the three-member committee set up to look into the issue in March this year will be directed to expedite a report on the matter.
“The three-member committee was set up on March 12 this year before our Government took over. But its report is yet to come and we have instructed this committee to expedite it. We have full sympathy with their cause and there should be no discrimination on the basis of language. I appeal to the students not to put themselves in physical or mental stress,” Minister of State for Personnel and Training Jitendra Singh said in lok Sabha.
The Government said the next course of action would be decided depending on the contents of the report of the committee. Singh said the Government is already seized of the issue and has taken it up “very seriously and in a sensitive manner”.
The fast undertaken by the aspirants formally ended after BJP MP Manoj Tiwari and other leaders offered fruit juice to striking students. The students expressed their gratitude and thanked Union Minster Jitendra Singh for his concern about their demands.
The civil services examination is conducted by the UPSC in three stages--preliminary, main, and interview-- to choose candidates for elite IAS, IFS and IPS among others. There are two compulsory papers of 200 marks each in the preliminary examination known as CSAT-I and CSAT-II. The CSAT-II paper carries questions on comprehension, interpersonal skills including communication skills, logical reasoning and analytical ability, decision making and problem solving, general mental ability, basic numeracy, and English language comprehension skills (of Class X level).
The students had been holding prolonged protests and resorting to hunger strike for several weeks demanding scrapping of CSAT saying the exam pattern was putting Hindi and regional language aspirants at a disadvantage. Congress, RJD and Samajwadi Party members trooped into the Well and raised slogans against “discrimination” by UPSC against candidates opting for Hindi and regional languages as medium for the examination.