NRA: Salient features of National Recruitment Agency

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The Union Cabinet on Wednesday decided to set up a National Recruitment Agency (NRA), a multi-agency body, for conducting a Common Eligibility Test (CET) to screen or shortlist candidates for the Group B and C (non-technical) posts. The NRA will have representatives of Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Finance/Department of Financial Services, the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) and the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS), according to an official statement.

Why NRA?

At present, candidates seeking government jobs have to appear for separate examinations conducted by multiple recruiting agencies for various posts, for which similar eligibility conditions have been prescribed. Candidates have to pay fee to multiple recruiting agencies and also have to travel long distances for appearing in various exams. These multiple recruitment examinations are a burden on the candidates, as also on the respective recruitment agencies, involving avoidable/repetitive expenditure, law and order/security related issues and venue related problems.

On average, 2.5 crore to 3 crore candidates appear in each of these examinations.

A CET would enable these candidates to appear once and apply to any or all of these recruitment agencies for the higher level of examination. This would indeed be a boon to all the candidates.

It is envisioned that the NRA would be a specialist body bringing state-of-the-art technology and best practices to the field of central government recruitment.

Here are the salient features of the NRA and CET:

• NRA to conduct online CET twice in a year.
• Registration of applicants, generation of roll number/admit cards, display of marks, merit list, etc, will be done online.
• The CET would be available in a number of languages. This would greatly facilitate people from different parts of the country to take the exam and have an equal opportunity of being selected.
• The CET will be based on multiple-choice objective type question paper.
• The CET score of a candidate will be valid for three years.
• Every district of the country will have an examination centre, including the 117 aspirational districts. CET to be conducted at over 1,000 centres. Examination centres in every district of the country would greatly enhance access to the candidates located in far-flung areas.
• Major relief to poor candidates: Presently, the candidates have to appear in multiple examinations conducted by multiple agencies. Apart from the examination fees, candidates have to incur additional expenses for travel, boarding, lodging and other such activities. A single examination would reduce the financial burden on candidates to a large extent.
• Women candidates to benefit greatly: Women candidates especially from rural areas face constraints in appearing in multiple examinations as they have to arrange for transportation and places to stay when exam centres are far away. They sometimes also have to find suitable persons to accompany them to these centres that are located far away. The location of test centres in every district would greatly benefit candidates from rural areas in general and women candidates in particular.
• No restriction on number of attempts by the candidate, subject to upper age limit prescribed.
• Relaxation in upper age limit to be given to candidates of SC/ST/OBC/PwD, etc.
• Candidates would have the facility of registering on a common portal and give a choice of centres. Based on availability, they would be allotted centres. The ultimate aim is to reach a stage wherein candidates can schedule their own tests at centres of their choice.
• NRA to ensure better access to rural, underprivileged candidates and women.
• NRA will facilitate employment generation.
• CET scores can be shared with central government, state government, union territories, public sector undertakings and private sector.
• NRA shall conduct a separate CET each for the three levels of graduate, higher secondary (12th pass) and the matriculate (10th pass) candidates for those non-technical posts to which recruitment is presently carried out by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), the Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) and by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS).
• Based on the screening done at the CET score level, final selection for recruitment shall be made through separate specialised Tiers (II, III etc) of examination which shall be conducted by the respective recruitment agencies.
• The curriculum for this test would be common as would be the standard. This would greatly ease the burden of candidates who are at present required to prepare for each of the examinations separately as per the different curriculum.
• The Government has sanctioned a sum of Rs 1,517.57 crore for the NRA. The expenditure will be undertaken over a period of three years. Apart from setting up the NRA, costs will be incurred for setting up examination infrastructure in the 117 aspirational districts.