Over 8,000 students register for UPSC coaching in Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: More than 8,000 candidates have registered for the UPSC Civil Service Coaching Examination to be conducted by the higher education department in five cities on March 26.
From Friday, the department facilitated download of admit cards for the examination. The department will select 200 candidates and provide free civil service coaching to them for the prelims and mains. For the purpose, the department has partnered with ACQ IAS Academy and has decided to provide the free coaching to the selected candidates in Bhubaneswar.
To make the selection process more transparent, the department has been conducting the pre-qualifying entrance examination. The department has also decided to provide free accommodation and food along with the coaching to the selected candidates in the state capital.
“We have come up with the new scheme to provide free civil service coaching to students domicile to the state and ready them for the examination. They will be imparted the civil service coaching by the academy, which has a high success rate,” said higher education secretary Bishnupada Sethi.
Th department in mid-February started the process and asked the State Selection Board to take the responsibility of conducting the examination while the Odisha Computer Application Centre was assigned the task of developing the online module for registration of the candidates.According to the plan, the examination will be conducted in Bhubaneswar, Berhampur, Balasore, Jeypore and Sambalpur. The examination will be conducted offline and will consist of one paper of objective-type questions carrying a maximum of 200 marks.
After repeated poor performance of Odia students in the UPSC examinations, the department had started imparting free training to students to appear for the civil service examinations in the state-run universities.