Tarun Karthick
Port Blair, 25 February 2023
The Hon’ble Lt. Governor, A&N Islands and Vice-Chairman, Islands Development Agency, Admiral D K Joshi, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, NM, VSM (Retd.) reviewed the status of vacancies and action plan for filling up these vacancies in this UT, at Raj Niwas on 24th February.
The Chief Secretary, A&N Administration, Mr. Keshav Chandra, IAS, briefed about the sanctioned strength, number of vacancies which remain to be filled up and efforts made by the Administration for filling these vacancies in Mission Mode so as to ensure that most of the vacancies get filled up by October, 2023.
The Secretary, (Personnel) made a detailed presentation about these vacancies, Department wise and informed the Hon’ble Lt. Governor that concerted efforts are being made both at the Secretariat level for common cadre vacancies as well as various level of different Departments to fill up these positions at the earliest. He also appraised that the A&N Administration had conducted written examination for various Group C posts with the assistance of SSC, New Delhi and that short listing of the candidates in terms of merit/categories/eligibility for Skills Test (Typewriting speed and Shorthand) is being done for conduct of Tier-II and Tier-III Skills Tests.
The Skills Test which is qualifying in nature, is likely to be conducted during the end of March/first week of April, 2023 at Port Blair Centre only. The skills test will be undertaken with the Standard Software (Computer Based Test) by the Administration.
He further informed that the Administration is aiming to conduct two more examinations in the offline mode with the assistance of Staff Selection Commission, New Delhi tentatively in the month of July 2023. This will include Common Recruitment Examination for Matric Level Posts followed by Higher Secondary Level (Science Stream) Posts. Applications will be invited for these posts from the aspirants in the month of April/May, 2023.
The Hon’ble Lt. Governor, while appreciating the efforts of the Administration in conducting these examinations in fair and transparent manner, desired that the highest standards and necessary precautions and timelines must be adhered to negate any scope for public criticism or allegations.
The Hon’ble Lt. Governor also directed that the Administration should follow zero tolerance policy for corruption or malpractices in recruitment, and for the purpose, press releases may be issued to ensure wide publicity and awareness about the entire recruitment process.
The Chief Secretary assured that all necessary precautions will be taken by the Administration in this direction to ensure that the exams are conducted in a free, fair and transparent manner. He also informed that a high level committee to review the existing Recruitment Rules of various Group B (Non-Gazetted) and Group C (Tech) posts and to explore the possibility of holding common recruitment examination for these posts under various departments is being constituted under the Chairmanship of ADGP.
The meeting was attended by the Chief Secretary, DGP, PCCF, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, all Secretaries and other Senior Officers of A&N Administration.