Dimapur, March 12 (EMN): Meritocracy was their election promise and the newly formed People’s Democratic Alliance (PDA) government led by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio has announced some major changes in recruitment and composition rules of the Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) on Monday.
The Nagaland Public Service Commission (state civil & other services) Recruitment (7th amendment) Rules of 2017 and the Nagaland Public Service Commission (chairman, members & staff) (8th amendment) Regulations of 2017 approved by the governor and notified by the chief secretary comes into immediate effect.
With the amended rules the NPSC will now have to declare all the answer keys of all the examinations conducted by the commission.
The total marks for the interview to the civil and allied services have also been amended from the previous 75 to 55 marks. The award of minimum and maximum marks from the interview shall from now be in line with the system that is practised by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). This has been brought about probably because there were intense complaints the previous years when some candidates scored as high as 74.12 out of 75.
The notification also changed the method of short-listing candidates for the main examinations from the preliminary examination according to the order of marks scored in the ratio of 1:10. This entails that equal opportunity would be given to all in spite of the number of vacant posts. With this notification the ratio has been made uniform for all numbers of posts that are vacant. Earlier, the ratio used to be as high as 1:20 for up to 10 vacant posts and as low as 1:6, or minimum of 700 for vacant posts that were more than 100.
The board of interview—previously consisting of only the chairman of the NPSC, board members, and a subject matter expert whenever required—has also been reconstituted for the civil and allied services. A new clause was added to sub-rule (2) of Rule 21 that would enable the chief secretary and the director general of police to nominate a senior officer to be included in the interview board.
Also, the marking pattern, its rules, for technical papers have been amended. From now there will be in total 200 multiple choice questions, each worth one mark with a negative mark of one-third for wrong answers. It was before the amendment that the technical papers had 125 questions of two marks each.
The Nagaland Public Service Commission (Chairman, Members & Staff) (8th Amendment) Regulations of 2017 changed the eligibility for members of the board. At least three members in the five-member board can now be someone who has administrative experience and has served the state government as a secretary at least.
The rule for exemption of posts in the purview of the NPSC has been amended as well and the criteria increased. From now, posts with a scale of pay less than the pay scale of 5200-20200 per month and grade pay of INR 2800 per month will not be in the purview of the NPSC.
