The Indian Army is mulling a major revamp in the process of recruitment of soldiers by reversing the order of selection and introducing an online test.
Maj. General J.K. Marwal, Officiating Director-General Recruiting, who was here on Sunday to oversee the army’s recruitment rally, said under the existing recruitment process, physical test was conducted first followed by medical test. Written test is held later.
“We don’t want to put hundreds of thousands of candidates to a lot of inconvenience as they need to assemble for physical tests. Instead, we will have online tests with objective-type questions for which the candidates need to answer with just a click of the mouse,” Mr. Marwal said. Those who passed the test would be called for the physical test and then for the medical test. The proposal had got in-principle approval from the Centre and it had been proposed to take up the new recruitment process on a pilot basis in three of the 12 zones in the country – Chennai, Jaipur and Ambala.
The online tests would be administered by some outsourced IT company and the test would be conducted on a single day in the entire zone.
Maj. General Marwal said the entire recruitment process had been made more transparent and the reason for rejection of candidates would be offered in writing at every stage.
Among the recruitable male population, the number of people aspiring to join the armed forces was lesser in Tamil Nadu when compared to north Indian States. “Each rally here attracts only around 20,000 youths, while elsewhere it attracts around 1.20 lakh to 1.25 lakh candidates. Higher job opportunities in other avenues could be one of the reasons,” he said.
On the increasing number of vacancies in the officer cadre through Short Service Commission, he said it could be due to fear of insecurity after completion of the service.
