National Recruiting Agency

The NRA is to conduct the Common Eligibility Test (CET) for recruitment to all non-gazetted posts in the Central government and public sector banks. The NRA will conduct Tier-I exam only, initially for IBPS, RRB and SSC.

Why is it needed?

As of now, aspirants have to take different exams that are conducted by various agencies for central government jobs. According to the Department of Personnel and Training, on an average 2.5 crore to 3 crore aspirants appear for about 1.25 lakh vacancies in the central government every year. At present, candidates seeking government jobs have to appear for separate examinations conducted by multiple recruiting agencies for various posts.

Candidates have to pay fees to multiple recruiting agencies and also have to travel long distances for appearing in various exams. Women candidates especially from rural areas face constraints in appearing in multiple examinations as they have to arrange for transportation and places to stay in places that are far away.

Facilities for candidates

Examination centres in every district would greatly enhance access to the candidates located in far-flung areas. There will be a special focus on creating examination infrastructure in the 117 Aspirational Districts, which will go a long way in affording access to candidates at a place near where they reside.

This will prove a great boon to crores of aspirants residing in hilly, rural and remote areas and most importantly, for female candidates who face a plethora of problems in taking such examinations at different centres at different times. The resultant benefits in terms of cost, effort and safety will be immense. Taking job opportunities closer to the people is a radical step that would greatly enhance ease of living for the youth. The NRA also envisions conducting mock tests for rural youth and will have a 24×7 helpline and grievance redressal portal.

The format of the CET

The CET score of the candidate shall remain valid for three years from the date of declaration of the result. The best of the valid scores shall be deemed to be the current score of the candidate and there would be no restriction on the number of attempts to appear in the CET subject to the upper age limit.

Relaxation in the upper age limit shall be given to SC/ST/OBC candidates and from other categories as per the extant government policy. This will reduce the hardship of candidates who spend a considerable amount of time, money and effort preparing for and giving these examinations every year.

Moreover, the NRA shall conduct a separate CET each for the three levels of graduate, higher secondary (12th pass) and the matriculate (10th pass) candidates for those non-technical posts to which recruitment is presently carried out by the SSC, RRBs and IBPS.

Final selection for recruitment shall be made through separate specialised tiers (II, III, etc) of examination, which shall be conducted by the respective recruitment agencies. This will ease the burden of candidates who are at present required to prepare for each of the examinations separately.

Other benefits

Candidates would have the facility of registering on a common portal and give a choice of centres. Based on availability, they will be allotted centres. The ultimate aim is to reach a stage wherein candidates can schedule their tests at centres of their choice.

The CET will be available in several languages. This will greatly facilitate people from different parts of the country to take the exam and have an equal opportunity of being selected and promote inclusivity. Besides Hindi and English, tests will be conducted in 12 languages in due course and efforts will be made to include all the languages mentioned in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution.

Initially, the CET scores would be used by the three major recruitment agencies. However, over time, it is expected that other recruitment agencies of the central government will adopt it as well. Further, other agencies in the public as well as private domain will be able to adopt the CET if they so choose. In the long run, the CET score could be shared with other recruiting agencies in the central government, state governments/Union Territories, public sector undertakings and the private sector in a true spirit of cooperative federalism.