Huge increase in candidates seeking central jobs

Mumbai, May 1 (IANS) There has been a whopping eight-fold increase in the number of applicants for the prestigious Staff Selection Commission examinations, from one million to nearly nine million in the past four years, a top official said here Tuesday.

In 2008-2009, the SSC exams hopefuls were one million, which shot up to 8.85 million in 2011-2012, said SSC chairman N. K. Raghupathy.

"We are expecting 13 million applications during this year - 2012-13. The SSC is being tasked with recruiting large number of personnel for internal security agencies of the Home Ministry," Raghupathy told media persons here this evening.

In order to handle the huge number of applications and as part of its mission to modernize the recruitment system for government jobs, Raghupathy said that SSC has introduced online application facilities.

"We want to take this process further and study feasibility of introducing online examinations. But, we are hindered by lack of hardware infrastructure," Raghupathy admitted.

For instance, he explained that making available sufficient number of computer terminals for such a large number of candidates is the biggest challenge in introducing online examinations.

Discussing other developments, he said the SSC has restructured the examination pattern as per the recommendations made by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission.

It has improved the communication with applicants through its 10 regional language websites to attract more candidates.