Notice to Centre, UPSC on plea against English test

The UPSC was asked by the Delhi High Court to respond to a plea questioning its decision to introduce in Civil Services Preliminary Examination a new compulsory paper, part of which is to test candidates' ability to understand English. A bench of Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw issued notice also to the Ministry of Personnel, besides the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), seeking their stands by March 14 on the plea by one Dina Nath Batra. Batra, in his petition, contended the new test paper deprived a majority of Indian citizens, having Hindi or other languages as the language of instruction during their education, of a level playing field in the competition. His counsel Jagdeep Dhankad said that civil services aspirants till 2010 were required to answer two objective type question papers - one for general knowledge and the other on a subject of their choice, in the annual preliminary examination. The UPSC, however, introduced a new Aptitude Test paper worth 200 marks in 2011 containing an English Language Comprehension Skill section worth 22.50 marks, to be answered compulsorily by all candidates, said the lawyer. The counsel alleged the new question paper on English is "discriminatory" as it denies "equal competing platform" to those aspirants who had studied in Hindi medium or any other Indian language. "Hindi is the basis of Indian culture and making English compulsory will strike a body blow to wipe off India's rich cultural heritage from its roots. Hindi and other classical languages have to be given their rightful place in the educational system and in civil services," the petition said. The petitioner also contended that the central government had not consulted various official committees on language, while implementing the new pattern.

Civil Services Examination-2012

Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination(Notice Number 04/2012-CSP) Notice Date : 11-02-2012 Closing Date:05-03-2012

IMPORTANT DATES:

• Date of Notification:-- 4th February, 2012
• Last Date for Applying:-- 5th March, 2012
• Date of Civil Services Preliminary Test, 2012:-- 20th May 2012; 1 Day
• Date of Civil Services Mains Test, 2012:-- From 5th October 2012; 21 Days
• Number of vacancies : 1037 (this could be revised)
  

1. An applicant who fulfills the eligibility criteria prescribed in the Civil Services 2012 notification (i.e. the detailed information published in the 'Employment News' or available on website http://www.upsconline.nic.in/) of that particular examination can apply online.

2. Applicant is required to first complete the part-I of the application and thereafter complete the part-II of the application.

3. There are three options for the payment of fee-Pay
i) by Cash in any branch of State Bank of India,
ii) Pay by credit/debit Card and
iii) Pay by Net Banking facility of SBI.

4. An applicant who wants to pay the fee by cash should take a print of the PAY-IN SLIP by clicking on the option "Print Bank Pay-in-Slip". Making use of this pay-in-slip, an applicant can deposit the fee in cash at any branch of the State Bank of India. The bank will not accept any other challan/form for the payment of fee by cash. After depositing the fee by this pay-in-slip, the bank will provide a "TRANSACTION ID". An applicant will again have to log in and start submission of the part-II of the online application.

5. All the applicants who are exempted from payment of fee on account of being a Female/PH/SC/ST candidate can straightaway proceed to the part-II of the application.

6. Once an applicant has successfully submitted the part-I and part-II of the application through online, the same gets registered with the Commission and the applicant is not required to send a hard copy of the print out of his/her application to the Commission's office. However, it is strongly advised that the applicant keeps a hard copy of his /her application for his/her own record and future communication with the commission, if any

Important

 

Applicants are requested to note that before filling the online application they may have a careful look on the common reasons where an applicants online application is rejected by the Commission. Applicants are therefore advised to be careful enough so that chances of their applications being rejected by the Commission are minimized to the best possible extent and their effort is not lost due to the reasons which can be avoided by them if they remain slightly more careful while submitting their application to the Commission. The Experience of Commission (UPSC) shows that major rejection happens due the following reasons. 

(a)           Application being rejected on the grounds of bad quality of submitted photograph.Sample1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 

(b)           Application being rejected on the grounds of bad quality of submitted signature. Sample 1 2 3 4 

(c)            Application being rejected on the grounds of swapping of photograph with that of signature. Sample 1 

(d)           Application rejected due to submission of photograph only, i.e no signature submittedor photograph submitted at the place of signature as well. Sample 1 

(e)            Application rejected due to submission of signature only, i.e no photograph submitted or signature submitted at the place of photograph as well. Sample 1 

(f)             Only PART-I of the application is submitted to the Commission and thus their application is incomplete because of non-submission of PART-II. Sample 1 

(g)           Applicant submitted multiple applications, however fee deposited (TID** )against a particular application (RID*) is mentioned for other application having different RID. Sample 1 2 3  

(h)           Applicant submitted PART-I and paid fee as well, but did/could not complete PART-II i.e. failed to submit photograph and signature. Sample1 

(i)             Application being rejected on the grounds of non submission of payment proof to the Commission within specified time in case of fictitious payment ***cases (which are intimated to the applicant through e-mail as well as published on the website of the Commission within 2 weeks after the last date of receipt of online application). 

* RID is Registration ID, which is generated by the system when the application completes PART-I registration of his application.

** TID is Transaction ID, which is given by Bank official when the applications deposits his/her fee through cash mode and it is automatically generated when Internet Banking or credit/debit card mode is used for making the fee payment.

***Fictitious payment cases are those cases for which the Commission does not receive any information from the bank authorities to which the applicant has claimed to have deposited his/her fees. 

Candidate may click here to down exhaustive samples of rejected applications (.pdf)in .ZIP Format

For the sake of guidance to the applicants, one sample application form, complete in all respects has been provided here, please click here to download

source : http://upsconline.nic.in/faq.php    http://upsconline.nic.in/mainmenu2.php
             http://upsc.gov.in/exams/notifications/2012/csp/upsc%20civil%20services%202012.pmd.pdf

7 Lovely Logics

Figures bust myth India's bureaucracy is “bloated”

India has only a fifth as many public servants as United States, relative to population

Long reviled for being bloated, India's Central and State governments in fact have just a fifth as many public servants as the United States, relative to population. The figures raise doubts, ahead of a Union budget that is likely to slash social-sector spending, on whether the country has the personnel it needs to improve governance and ensure universal access to services like education and health.

Data compiled from multiple sources, including a 2008 official survey, Right to Information applications, media reports and the 2011 census show, India has 1,622.8 government servants for every 100,000 residents. In stark contrast, the U.S. has 7,681. The Central government, with 3.1 million employees, thus has 257 serving every 100,000 population, against the U.S. federal government's 840.

This figure dips further if the 1,394,418 people working for the Railways, accounting for 44.81 per cent of the entire Central government workforce, are removed. Then, there are only about 125 central employees serving every 100,000 population. Information technology and communications services account for another 7.25 per cent of the Central government's staff.

Eminent economist V.K. Ramachandran says: "One of the most important lessons of the economic history of modern nations is that the most crucial requirements of social transformation can only be delivered by the public authority. A government that does not pay for skilled personnel to deliver education, health and land reform is one that condemns its people to under-development."

Shortage of

skilled workers

The Central government's figures also show that 59.69 per cent of public servants belonged to Group C and another 29.37 per cent to Group D — the two lowest paid categories. Though these workers are important, the numbers suggest there are system-wide shortages of skilled staff and administrators.

Decline in size

Interestingly, the data show a marginal decline of 0.13 per cent in the size of the Central government in 2008 from 2006, though the population grew.

"People keep complaining the government is too big," says Ajai Sahni, director of the New Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management (ICM), "but the figures show that it is in fact too anaemic to govern the country." The ICM, which spent over a year assembling the data, discovered that only some States even had centralised records on their employees — and there were no published estimates of staff members needed to realise new development objectives.

Local and State governments

The highest ratios of public servants to population among the Indian States are in the conflict-torn or border regions, where the Central government has made special funding available for enhanced government employment in an effort to contain discontent. Thus, Mizoram has 3,950.27 public servants per the 100,000 population, Nagaland 3,920.62 and Jammu and Kashmir 3,585.96. Bar Sikkim, with 6,394.89 public servants per 100,000, no State comes close to the international levels.

For the most part though, India's relatively backward States have low numbers of public servants — which means staff are not available to engage in the kinds of education, health and social services provision needed to address the worst kinds of poverty. Bihar has just 457.60 per 100,000, Madhya Pradesh 826.47, Uttar Pradesh has 801.67, Orissa 1,191.97 and Chhattisgarh 1,174.62.

This is not to suggest there is a causal link between poverty and low levels of public servants: Gujarat has just 826.47 per 100,000 and Punjab 1,263.34. The data could explain, though, why even well-off States like these have made hard work of ensuring universal primary education and eradicating poverty.

source : http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article2843370.ece      - Praveen Swami

50 years of Customs Act,1962