The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the setting up of a National Recruitment Agency (NRA) to streamline the recruitment to be all non-gazetted posts in the Central government and public sector banks.
As per the centre, this move will help to benefit the less privileged sections of the society and will help to reduce the burden on the students. This new agency will conduct the examination ‘Common Eligibility Test’ and will be an independent and professional organisation. The centre has sanctioned a fund of Rs 1517.57 crore which will be undertaken over a period of three years.

The proposal for the establishment of NRA was first given by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget 2020.

Existing set up

• An average of around 2.5 – 3 crore candidates appear for these exams every year and have to register for separate examinations conducted by different recruitment agencies despite of the fact that most of these examinations share a common Eligibility criteria.
• Not only this, a candidate pays a hefty amount as registration fee apart from the money spent on travelling and reaching the examination centres.

Changes in this setup

• A Common Entrance Test (CET) will be conducted to shortlist candidates for the Group B and Group C (non-technical) positions.
• The score of this examination will be valid for a duration of three years from the date of the declaration of results. The best of these three scores will be considered as the current score of the candidate.
• There will not be any restrictions on the number of attempts by a candidate subject to the upper age limit. However relaxation in the upper age limit shall be given to candidates of the SC / ST / OBC category.
• A separate CET will be conducted for the three levels graduate, higher secondary and matriculate candidates.
• Based on the shortlisting done by the CET, the respective agencies might undergo a final selection for recruitment through separate specialized tiers.
• The curriculum for this examination would be standard and hence would reduce the burden on the candidates by many folds.
• There would be a common portal for the registration of candidates wherein they will give a choice of centres and the centres will be allotted based on the availability.
• CET would be available in a number of languages facilitating people from different parts of the country to register for the examination.

Benefits:
• Help to reduce the time, money and efforts spent by candidates every year in registering for different examinations.
• This will help to reduce the hardships faced by women candidates who face difficulty while travelling multiple times to different examination centres.
• Ease of selection and job placement for the disadvantaged sections of the society.

Report by Riya for IHOIK Education Desk