This petition is to bring to public's notice the extreme difficulty Civil Services Aspirants have faced during the last five years since 2011 as a result of frequent, discriminatory and sudden changes that were introduced in the exam pattern. It is an endeavour to find a final solution to the problem so that it covers all affected students with minimum hassle to the government. Hence, we demand 3 additional attempts covering affected aspirants from 2011-2015 .Rationale for t

Background of the problem

In the last few years Union Public Service Commission has imposed several changes in Civil Services Exam which are unprecedented due to their sheer frequency within such a short span.

2011- Introduction of CSAT merely 10 months before the exam

2013 - total overhaul of Mains syllabus 8 months before the exam

2015 - CSAT paper made qualifying merely 3 months before the exam

 

Impact of these Changes

2011 - Introduction of CSAT put students coming from rural, non-English medium and Humanities background at a serious disadvantage. Statistics back this claim:

 
Humanities Candidates among IAS recruits in 2009 (Pre CSAT) – 30.25%

Humanities Candidates among IAS recruits in 2012 (CSAT era) – 15%
Candidates writing Mains in Hindi in 2008 (Pre CSAT) – 48%

Candidates writing Mains in Hindi in 2012(Post CSAT) – 18%
This Exam pattern continued till 2014, effectively excluding a large section of aspirants from the Civil Services.

2015 - CSAT made qualifying merely 3 months before the exam.
This was a significant change introduced at an extremely short notice. 50% of the syllabus was dropped and for the first time in 46 years merit in preliminary exam was calculated solely on the basis of one paper.

Candidates devoted a bigger chunk of their preparation time for second paper as potential of this paper to fetch marks is much higher in comparison to Paper-I towards the final score in Preliminary Exam.

Case in Point 1: In 2013, the minimum cut off for preliminary exam was 30 marks in Paper-I and 70 marks in Paper-II which confirms the fact that Paper-II is higher scoring as compared to Paper-I, despite the equivalence of marks in both the papers.

Case in Point 2:It was also evident from the marks obtained in two papers of Preliminary examination by Civil Services toppers (including Rank-1 holder of 2014) of past 2-3 years that scoring high in paper-II ensured their clearing of preliminary examination. Thus it was established, for every serious aspirant who analysed the past 2-3 years performance for the exam that Paper-II would play a significant role in clearing or not-clearing the preliminary exam

Hence, dropping this paper merely 3 months before the exam and making it qualifying gave no time at all to candidates to prepare according to the changed pattern. Selection to an extent became more a matter of chance than hard work and strategy.

 

Steps taken so far by UPSC and DoPT post 2011

After 4 years of protests, DOPT provided only one fresh attempt (in the CSE prelim 2015) to only those who appeared in CSE prelims 2011. This one attempt in no way compensates for the changes aspirants had to cope with for full five years (including the short notice change brought in, in CSE(Prelim) 2015).

2 additional attempts and consequent increase in age were given to students in January 2014. But since this was the era of CSAT, the discrimination did not help the affected students at all.

 

In the past whenever UPSC has introduced any significant change in syllabus or exam pattern, it has compensated students with fresh attempts and consequent age relaxation.

Examples when UPSC compensated students with additional attempts/age relaxation in the past to neutralize any negative effect of syllabus/pattern change

In the year 1979, a new scheme for civil services examination was commenced, and the career of vulnerable section of aspirants was then secured by providing 3 fresh attempts.
Similar situation occurred in the year 1992. 1 fresh attempt with age relaxation of five year was then given to aspirants.
Our humble demand

These changes have had a heart breaking impact on the dreams and aspirations of lakhs of students. They lost five years of their careers and payed an enormous socio-economic cost due to changes brought in by UPSC in CSE between 2011 and 2015.

Hence, we demand 3 attempts for all the students who appeared in the exam between 2011 and 2015 in order to compensate for the 5 years lost dealing with the abovementioned changes and there adverse impact.

 A small notification from the government in the next few months will give students ample time to prepare for next year’s exam with very little hassle to the government. We believe it is a fair demand and request the government to kindly grant us our right to strive for our dreams again.