More than twenty months after taking the decision, the Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday issued a formal order dispensing with the process of interviews for all future recruitments into government service, including the executive posts.
It was on October 17, 2019 that Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, at a high-level meeting on recruitments, took the decision to do away with personal interviews for all recruitments through the AP Public Service Commission. Accordingly, APPSC Secretary P S R Anjaneyulu wrote to the General Administration Department on October 21, seeking necessary action on the issue.
A top official in the General Administration Department said the new initiative was a "major reform", aimed at improving transparency and reducing subjectivity in all the recruitments in government cadre. In an order on Saturday, Principal Secretary (Services and Human Resources Management) Shashi Bhushan Kumar said the government decided to dispense with the interview process "to maintain utmost transparency and ensure complete trust of the competing candidates in the entire selection process".
The new system, wherein only written examinations would be conducted for all categories of posts, including Group-1 services, would be applicable for all recruitments to be notified from now on. In 2011, the then united AP government headed by N Kiran Kumar Reddy did away with the interview process for all subordinate services as part of the reforms introduced in APPSC recruitments.
The reforms were implemented as per the recommendations of a high-level committee headed by the then Special Chief Secretary J Satyanarayana. Written tests and interviews were, however, retained for executive posts like deputy collector, Deputy Superintendent of Police, commercial taxes officer, regional transport officer and the like.
Henceforth, these recruitments too will happen through written examination only.
