Onus on newly recruited civil servants to realise vision of new India: Jitendra Singh

NEW DELHI: Union minister Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said the onus is on newly recruited civil servants to become active partners in realising prime minister Narendra Modi's vision of a new India which leads the rest of the world. Interacting with the top 20 rank holders of the civil services examination 2021, results of which were declared on May 30, he said that when the country is celebrating 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' to mark 75th year of India's Independence, "this century batch with 25 to 30 years of active service ahead will chart a new course when independent India turns 100".

The minister said the onus will be on them to become active partners in realising prime minister Modi's vision of a new India which leads the rest of the world. Singh, the minister of state for personnel, said that under Modi, India is already on the ascent and civil servants of this new genre have the privileged responsibility of taking it to the top league in the global arena. The minister also underlined that even candidates having done schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya, Navodaya School and government schools are cracking the exam, while earlier it was mostly confined to students from elite schools. Singh said after he joined the government in 2014, he had introduced in the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) a new tradition of personally inviting the all-India toppers to North Block and felicitating them.

Responding to some of the suggestions of toppers that Indian language students face difficulties and challenges in taking up the exam, he said that the government is committed to promoting Indian languages and efforts are on to translate the engineering and medical books in Indian languages through professionals. Singh reminded the officers that the National Education Policy (NEP-2020)will also address some of the challenges. The minister also informed that the National Recruitment Agency (NRA) under the DoPT is gearing up to conduct a computer-based online Common Eligibility Test (CET) for recruitment to non-gazetted government posts by year-end. He added that, to begin with, the test will be conducted in 12 languages and gradually it will include all the languages mentioned in the 8th schedule of the Constitution.

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During the introduction of the 20 toppers, the minister noted that there are 10 engineers and two medicos among them and hoped that they will add value to the work assigned to them in carrying out various specialised schemes and programmes introduced by the Modi government in the last eight years.

Singh hoped that the technocrats will be able to do justice to the highly specialised flagship programmes of the government in sectors such as health, agriculture, water, environment, industries, education, skills and mobility. He also pointed out that there are eight female candidates out of 20 toppers, which is nearly 40 per cent, and asserted that "we are closely arriving at gender parity".

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The minister also took note of the demographic change happening over the last few years and said that they represent a pan-India coverage as these candidates hail from the states and UTs of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Telangana. He said this gender and demographic change augurs well for a diverse country like India. Among the first 20 civil services toppers invited by Singh, the first three toppers this year Shruti Sharma (first), Ankita Agarwal (second) and Gamini Singla (third) happen to be women, followed in that order by Aishwarya Verma, Utkarsh Dwivedi, Yaksh Chaudhary, Samyak S Jain, Ishita Rathi, Preetam Kumar, Harkeerat Singh Randhawa, Shubhankar Pratyush Pathak, Yasharth Shekhar, Priyamvada Ashok Mhaddalkar, Abhinav J Jain, C Yaswanthkumar Reddy, Anshu Priya, Mehak Jain, Ravi Kumar Sihag, Diksha Joshi and Arpit Chauhan.