Indian Administrative and Allied Services in Sunday to pass a preliminary exam 2020 at the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). A total of 43,921 candidates were enrolled at various centres in the City to pass an examination. In the first shift of “general studies” article, approximately 21,790 (49.6%) registered candidates were identified.
This was a sharp drop compared to 15 % to 20% on average drop over the past few years. Interactions with candidates revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic was the main reason for this high number of absent persons.
In this second shift, the number fell to 21,607 (49.2%). Besides fear of infection catching, many people have not been able to train for the exam in the past six months because of limitations on coaching courses, community studies, library sessions and mentoring programmes.
Atharva Srivastava, who chose to skip the examination said, “Five attempts to clear up the examination are permitted to a candidate under an unreserved category, while people from other backward classes which try the test seven times. Appearing in the half-preparation test was a waste of an attempt.
The third attempt on Sunday, Dr. Pawan Kumar Misra from the Department of Sociology at Lucknow, who had been guideing students on the civil service for more than a decade, says he noticed that many students opted out of the race that yea ‘Besides the lack of training, there was a chance that Covid-19 might get contagious that led many of my batchmats to miss the test.’ “These candidates didn’t feel secure because they had to sit indoors for long and couldn’t take part in debates and discussions with their advisors about current affairs.