UPSC recommendations fall short of direct recruitment requirement

Larger proportion of government posts meant for general category goes unfulfilled

As the debate over lateral entry continues, there is a trend to note. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has not recommended enough candidates for posts in governments and state-run public organisations through the direct selection process. This has led to shortfalls, especially in medical roles and for people in the general category.

The UPSC, apart from recruitments through periodic examinations, can directly recruit people for Group A and gazetted Group B posts of the central government, union territories, statutory organisations, local bodies and public institutions. Such recruitment for technical, scientific and non-technical posts is done through interviews, according to a constitutional provision.

UPSC's annual reports have included lateral entry as part of this method of recruitment since 2019-20.

However, the commission has not recommended enough candidates for appointments since 2000-01 (FY01), according to an analysis of data in annual UPSC reports. The number of posts for which recruitment is sought each year depends on requisitions received from government ministries and departments. Even then, the recommendation to post ratio (RPR) was less than 1. RPR is the number of candidate recommendations made by the UPSC for the total number of posts declared for recruitment. An RPR of less than one indicates a lack of suitable candidates for the posts advertised.

In FY15, recruitment was sought for more than 2,500 posts. It was the largest such recruitment through direct selection in 22 years since 2000-01 and the RPR was 0.91. In comparison, in FY22 (latest available data) the RPR was 0.84 for 666 posts. 

This is even though the UPSC receives more than 100 applications for each vacant position.

A larger proportion of posts requiring a medical qualification may have gone unfilled compared to other categories. In contrast, the proportion least unfulfilled is non-technical posts and those for engineering in some years. The RPR ratio for medical posts in FY22 was 0.75 compared to 0.94 in non-technical posts, while for engineering it was 0.96. This trend holds for 2019-20 too.

Positions for other backward classes consistently have had a ratio above 1, indicating that such posts are more likely to be filled compared to those for the other caste categories. The UPSC has had the greatest difficulty in filling positions in the general category, or those unreserved for any social or economic caste/class, as the RPR in these is lower than the overall average. Filling up posts reserved for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe categories is a challenge too.

Queries sent to the UPSC seeking reasons for the shortfall remain unanswered till Thursday evening.