The Hindu : Concern over IIT graduates joining civil services

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 24, 2003

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Concern over IIT graduates joining civil services

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 23. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has expressed deep concern over the high number of IIT graduates and MBBS degree holders getting selected to the All-India Civil Services.

When people with these professional qualifications joined the central civil services it was tantamount to "blocking" places for professional degrees and throwing the funds spent on the candidates' professional education "down the drain", it said.

In its 99th report examining the demands for grants of the Ministry of Personnel, the Committee said that if the expenditure incurred on the education of each of these students was taken into account it could run into crores.

More disturbing was the fact that the places/seats in a medical college or an IIT that such individuals occupied were effectively "blocked" by them preventing others from qualifying as engineers or doctors.

The Committee asked the Union Public Service Commission and the Government to present its view on the desirability of debarring such individuals from the central civil services given that the Government had spent large sums of money in providing them the facilities needed to allowed them to qualify as professionals in fields such as engineering and medicine.

It also asked the UPSC if it had evolved a mechanism to assess the average intellectual and physical capability, and the level of dedication to public service, of candidates who make it to the various central civil services.

The Committee felt that such an analysis could prove helpful to the UPSC to review the qualifications for candidates, the system of examination and interviews conducted by the UPSC in recruiting civil servants.

The Committee asked the UPSC to inform it with regard to any mechanism it had to make a batch-by-batch assessment of the standard of candidates who are finally recruited.

Such a mechanism would enable the UPSC to devise ways and means of taking remedial steps if it observed a deterioration in the calibre of candidates who appear at the UPSC examinations.

The Government and the UPSC will have to furnish their responses to the Committee within three months.

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