Prayagraj: The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) has affirmed its dedication to ensuring fairness and transparency in its selection procedures amid demonstrations against its recent decisions regarding PCS (pre)-2024 and RO/ARO-2023 examinations' scheduling and normalisation process.
"In this sequence, on the request of students, the system/examination format were also improved in view of the needs of the changing times," said a spokesperson of UPPSC.
Reiterating its commitment towards the convenience of students and the sanctity of examinations, the spokesperson called the tenure of the current commission historic in terms of examination reform.
"This is the first commission where ensuring the interest of competitive students is the top priority, where their expectations, hopes and needs have been fully respected. In view of the welfare of the candidates, the decision to remove optional subjects from the main examination of PCS was taken. Moreover, the long-standing demand of the candidates to remove scaling was fulfilled, and the opaque system ended," he added.
Apart from this, the commission has increased the qualification ratio from 13 to 15 candidates per post for the PCS preliminary examination. Additionally, interview shortlisting has been expanded from two to three candidates per position.
On normalisation, the official said where examinations are conducted on multiple days/shifts in relation to a single advertisement, it is necessary to adopt this process for evaluation of the answer sheets—as is adopted in various prestigious recruitment bodies.
Similarly, minimum human interference is being ensured in the entire system. "In the evaluation, the process of normalisation will be done by converting the roll number into anonymous number, to ensure the process is transparent," he said. The spokesperson said the commission remains receptive to candidates' suggestions that will be reviewed by an expert committee for appropriate action.
Earlier this year, the commission permanently debarred 186 experts from all confidential work of the body for creating wrong questions and answers. Apart from this, 44 experts were debarred in 2024 due to not completing the confidential work properly.