National Recruitment Agency

Context

• The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister has decided to set up a National Recruitment Agency (NRA) to conduct a common preliminary examination for various recruitments in the central government.

About NRA:

• The NRA will conduct the Common Eligibility Test (CET) for recruitment to non-gazetted posts in government and public sector banks.
• Approximately 1.25 lakh government jobs are advertised every year for which 2.5 crore aspirants appear in various examinations.
• This test aims to replace multiple examinations conducted by different recruiting agencies for selection for government jobs advertised each year, with a single online test.
• The Government also plans to provide outreach and awareness facilities to assist candidates in rural and far-flung areas to familiarize them with the online examination system.
• A 24x7 helpline will be set up for answering queries, complaints and queries.
• The present recruitment agencies– Staff Selection Commission (SSC), Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) and the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS)— will remain in place.
• Based on the preliminary screening done at the CET score level, final selection for recruitment shall be made through separate specialised Tiers (II, III, etc.) of examination which shall be conducted by the respective recruitment agencies.
• National Recruitment Agency will be a Society registered under the Societies Registration Act,1860.
• It will be headed by a Chairman of the rank of the Secretary to the Government of India. It will have representatives of the Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Finance/Department of Financial Services, the SSC, RRB & IBPS.
• The Government has sanctioned a sum of Rs. 1517.57 crores for the National Recruitment Agency (NRA).
• The expenditure will be undertaken over a period of three years.
• It is envisioned that the NRA would be a specialist body bringing state-of-the-art technology and best practices to the field of Central Government recruitment.

Features of CET:

• The Common Eligibility Test will be held twice a year.
• There will be different CETs for graduate level, 12th Pass level and 10th pass level to facilitate recruitment to vacancies at various levels.
• The curriculum for CET would be common.
• The CET will be conducted in 12 major Indian languages. This is a major change, as hitherto examinations for recruitment to Central Government jobs were held only in English and Hindi.
• Initially, CET will cover recruitments made by three agencies: viz. SSC, RRB and IBPS at Group B and C (non-technical) posts. This will be expanded in a phased manner.
• CET will be held in 1,000 centres across India in a bid to remove the currently prevalent urban bias. There will be an examination centre in every district of the country. There will be a special thrust on creating examination infrastructure in the 117 aspirational districts.
• CET will be the first-level test to shortlist candidates and the score will be valid for three years.
• There shall be no restriction on the number of attempts to be taken by a candidate to appear in the CET subject to the upper age limit.
• Age relaxation for SC/ST and OBC candidates as per existing rules will apply.

GS-II: National Recruitment Agency

News

• The Finance Ministry has approved a proposal to streamline recruitment of some posts in the government along with various equivalent recruitment in public sector banks.
• A new National Recruitment Agency (NRA) will be set up to conduct the Common Eligibility Test (CET) for all these competitive examinations, in which an estimated 2.5 crore candidates appear annually.

National Recruitment Agency (NRA)

• The proposed NRA will conduct preliminary examinations for all these recruitment, which are at present conducted by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) and the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS).
• As per the proposal, the NRA will subsequently forward the list of qualifying candidates to the respective recruiting agencies to conduct the mains examinations.
• The SSC and IBPS, it is learnt, will not be disbanded for now and will conduct the mains examinations as usual.
• The basic idea behind this proposal is to shortlist qualifying candidates through a Common Eligibility Test before sending them for the mains examination.

Why a new agency is proposed?

• The proposal for a new agency is meant to streamline recruitment process on subordinate-rank posts in the government.
• The proposed NRA is expected to reduce the burden of SSC and the IBPS, among others, from holding preliminary recruitment exams, which is an extensive exercise.
• Once up and running, NRA will work as a preliminary single-window agency to shortlist qualifying candidates from bulk of applicants and forward the list to SSC, IBPS, etc, to hold the mains.
• According to an estimate, more than 2.5 crore candidates sit for these prelims, most of them conducted by SSC.
• Recruitment conducted at present through the SSC and proposed to go to the new agency include the Combined Graduate Level (CGL) examination to enter government departments.

For clerical level

• Similarly in line with CGL, recruitment tests for clerical-level recruitment in public sector banks are proposed to go to the NRA.
• The proposed agency, however, will not be in charge of recruitment of Probationary Officers (PO) in banks.