The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has released the notification for the Civil Services examination 2021 for recruitment for 712 vacancies in 19 services of the Central government.
The notification was originally scheduled to be released on February 10, 2021. However due to administrative reasons the notification was rescheduled and released on Thursday.
The number of vacancies notified this year is 712 vacancies, which is far lower than the 796 vacancies notified in 2020 and the 896 vacancies notified in 2019. Usually the notification is issued for 23 to 24 different services. However, this year the list contains only 19 services.
The reduction in the number of services and the number of vacancies is on account of delinking the Railway services — the Railway Traffic Service, the Railway Accounts Service and the Railway Personnel Service — from the combined Civil Services Examination.
The government had earlier notified the creation of a Railway Management Service and the inclusion of these services in it based on the recommendations of the Bibek Debroy Committee. A separate exam is expected to be conducted for recruitment to these services from 2021 onwards, according to Gopalakrishna V, director of Brain Tree, Hyderabad.
Around 90,000 aspirants from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are expected to apply for the Civil Services Examination 2021. The exam will be conducted in three stages — Preliminary, the Main and the Personality test. The preliminary examination this year will conducted in 73 Centres across India on June 27.
There will be six centres in both AP and Telangana — Hyderabad and Warangal in Telangana, and Vijayawada, Tirupati, Vishakhapatnam and Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh. It is significant to note that Leh has been added as a centre for the Preliminary Examination from this year.
The results of the Preliminary Examination, which are expected to be released in the first week of August, would shortlist about 9,250 aspirants for the Main Examination.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Preliminary has been the has been the most formidable challenge of this examination for the last few years. “With the reduced number of vacancies, the difficulty level of the questions is expected to increase this year,” Mr. Gopalakrishna said.
