Centres to have at least one venue for visually impaired: UPSC

All centres across the country will have at least one venue for visually impaired candidates appearing in this year's civil services preliminary examination scheduled to be held on August 23.
"In order to facilitate the visually impaired candidates, it has been decided to open one venue each at each of the 70 centres across the country and two venues in Delhi. Earlier, there was one venue for limited seven centres in previous years," UPSC Secretary Ashim Khurana told PTI.
The civil services examination is conducted by the Union Public Service Commission annually in three stages-- preliminary, main and interview --to select candidates for prestigious Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS), among others.

The Commission today conducted a meeting of the coordinating supervisors of all 71 centres here to stress upon the need to ensure the smooth conduct of the examination.
"The coordinating supervisors were comprehensively enlightened, in meticulous detail, on the specific duties to be performed by them and venue supervisors at each stage of the examination," Khurana said.
They have been asked that the examination are to be conducted in a free, fair and transparent atmosphere, he said.

A record 9,45,908 candidates have applied for this year's civil services preliminary examination. A total of 9,45,302 and 7,76,604 candidates applied for the preliminary examination in 2014 and 2013, respectively.

The number of centres have gone up to 71 this year as against 59 in 2014 and 45 in 2013, the official said. The 12 new centres include Ludhiana, Ajmer, Rajkot, Indore, Agra, Gaya and Siliguri.
The number of venues have also gone up to 2,186 for 2015 exam. There were 2,137 and 1,700 venues for 2014 and 2013 tests, respectively.
In Delhi, the Commission has finalised 248 venues to accommodate 1.17 lakh candidates.
Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha had also written to Chief Secretaries of all states and Union Territories to assist the representatives of the Commission by way of ensuring adequate deployment of police force to provide security for successful conduct of the examination.

The preliminary examination on August 23 will be held in two sessions and each session will have two hours plus twenty minutes per hour (total forty minutes) extra time for visually impaired candidates (visual impairment 40 per cent or more) and the candidates with locomotor disability with cerebral palsy (suffering from dominant writing) extremity with minimum 40 per cent impairment only.