Dear Editor,
It was 2017 when the last APPSCCE advertisement was released. Now it’s 2020 and the APPSC hasn’t even conducted valid prelims, let alone recruited the officers required. The single-bench order quashed the validity of the prelims as well as the mains, and now the APPSC has gone to the double bench, challenging the single-bench judgment. Even god doesn’t know how long this tussle will continue when all the parties involved are unwilling to back off and are ready to drag the legal battle up to the Supreme Court.
The real losers here are the government and the unemployed fresh graduates like us who’re waiting for a fresh notification for the last three years. The government has come out with an ingenious hack to deal with the shortage of circle officers by letting other Group A officers take the charge wherever required. But this type of temporary hacks won’t provide long time solution to the issue and will hamper the performance of those officers in their original offices. The only proper solution here is timely recruitment of officers through the APPSCCE, and this requires a change in the approach with which exams are to be conducted.
The APPSCCE 2017 prelims were conducted in the old pattern, with a GS paper and an optional paper. The UPSC did away with this old pattern in 2011 and included a common CSAT paper instead of optional paper in the prelims.
After conducting the prelims twice, both of which were invalid, our state government and the APPSC finally implemented the UPSC pattern for APPSC as well. All this legal battle between the APPSC and the aspirants could have been avoided if the UPSC pattern had been implemented in the 2017 notification itself.
A reactionary approach tries to minimize the casualty after the damage has been done. We need more proactive approach from the government which updates itself to the needs of the people from time to time and focuses on stopping the occurrence of damage altogether.
It takes nine months for a baby to come out of its mother’s womb, but why is a single exam taking almost three years to finish? Either the APPSC should advertise new vacant seats in the new pattern while the ongoing court case goes on or cancel the old 2017 notification and issue a fresh notification with added vacancy while giving a one-time three-year age relaxation, taking into account that the candidates who had applied during the 2017 notification are nearing the age limit.
The government is already running short of officers and we’re running short of our career choices and age limit. Time is priceless and we want our time not to be wasted waiting for the APPSCCE for another year. We’re positive that this concern of the future generation of Arunachal concerns us all and our voices are heard by the right ears.
Sincerely,
Graduates since 2017