Chit of Objectivity

Chit of Objectivity

The Gujarat Public Service Commission is in revamping mode. Known for its delay in recruitment, it becomes vibrant these days in its recruitment calendar. Every alternate day, one may read some advertisement or notice in News papers given by the GPSC. The confidence level of the Commission is seen in declaring a long list of dates of various examinations in advance.

Recruitment as such may be a routine exercise for any Commission but GPSC has done something unique in the interview system for the gazetted posts recruitment recently. Generally,  the interview boards are chaired by the Chairman or one of the members of the PSC. Each interview board will consist  of a Chair person, technical experts and a government representative. Mostly the constitution of the interview board is pre decided and the candidates are appearing before the board as per their turn of allotment. Some candidates may find out board details and it's constitution in advance, and may try to approach the board members to influence the recruitment procedure.

The new Chairman of the GPSC has changed the interview procedure and made it objective through the chits. During the interview days, all the Chairmen and members of the interview boards assemble together at a common meeting place at 10.55 am. Then each one of them will lift a chit from a box. The chit carry the number of the interview board room in which the interviewer will go. Every morning they do the same exercise, till the entire lot of interviews get over. The constitution mix of each board members is changing everyday as it is determined through the chit just 5 minutes before the interview.

Similarly, for the candidates, there are chits carrying the interview board number. Each candidate lifts the chit from the box when his/her turn of interview comes. The chit suggests in which room he will go for the interview. As the board number and their constitution are unknown to the candidate till the last moment, he/she can't approach them and influence the selection procedure. 

One more thing is observed that when there are more boards taking the interview, the marks of the candidates vary across the boards. If one board is liberal in giving marks and the select list will carry more candidates from that board. And the candidates facing the conservative board will be the highest losers. But the GPSC has streamlined that too by reducing the gap of marks  to the level of <1 across the boards.

There used to be complaints of subjectivity in giving low marks to the reserve candidates so that they can't claim general seats and remain within the reserve quota. But with the new system of objective marking, all meritorious candidates from all categories have chance to top the list. 

Salute to the Chairman and his team of members of GPSC for their initiatives in raising the level of neutrality and objectivity in the interview system.

Punamchand
20 July 2016