STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: On the occasion of New Year day today, while the union Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) implemented its decision to discontinue interviews for selection to junior posts in Central Ministries and Departments, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh decided to write a DO letter for the second time as reminder to Chief Ministers of all the states urging them to take a lead in carrying forward the initiative for abolishing interviews for selection to such posts where these are not required.
It may be recalled that he had earlier written a similar letter to Chief Ministers of all the States on 29th September 2015 and prior to that Union Secretary, DoPT had written a letter on the same subject to Chief Secretaries of States on 4th September 2015.
Addressing a press conference here today in presence of senior officers of Government of India, Dr Jitendra disclosed that even in those states where the process of abolishing interviews had not yet taken off in a big way, the general demand from the public, particularly the youth, is that state governments should also emulate this heroic initiative taken by the Government of India on the directions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
He said, while some of the states like Maharashtra and Rajasthan have made appreciable progress in discontinuing interviews for recruitment to several posts, the other states were also being persuaded to take up this initiative seriously.
Besides bringing in transparency and ease to the process of selection, Dr Jitendra said, abolition of interviews would also go a long way in cutting down the expenditure from state exchequer incurred in carrying out a selection process.
For such posts where a special skill is required, the skill test will be done which would only be qualifying and would not be counted while calculating merit, he said.
With the beginning of new year, Dr Jitendra said, DoPT was implementing two important reforms, that is, the abolition of interviews for junior posts and at the same time, introduction of one-page form, particularly for the convenience of youth aspirants applying for jobs and for availing various welfare schemes launched by the central government.
These two measures, along with the introduction of self-attestation certificates earlier last year, have truly brought out the DoPT as a reform and R&D nodal agency of the government and reasserted its unique relevance in improving the governance, he added.
