RSS affiliate wants original draft of civil services exam in Hindi, says translation from English leads to errors

The process of preparing question paper for civil services exam should be overhauled and its original draft should be in Hindi and not English, an RSS-affiliated education organisation said on Tuesday.

The Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas (SSUN) said there are many errors and mistakes when exam papers are translated from English into Hindi or other regional languages and this impacts the prospects of students who have opted for these languages.

Addressing a press conference here, the head of SSUN's competitive exams reform committee, Devendra Singh, said there is a need for overhauling the process of preparing question paper of civil services exam as it favours students with English background.

"Original draft of the civil services exam question paper should be prepared in Hindi, rather than in English, as it leads to large number of errors and mistakes in translating paper from English to Hindi or other languages," he said.

Substantiating his argument, Singh claimed that out of more than 600 successful candidates who cleared the previous civil services exam, only 40 had opted for native languages. Out of these, only 14 gave the exam in Hindi.

Singh claimed the current exam pattern is too much in favour of those who are from Science background as decent weightage is given to reasoning which also includes Maths in preliminary exam.

He suggested there should be more focus on general studies in the exam.