Tag: Modi government

UPSC to hold exclusive Railway Service Exam from 2021 after merger of services.

Source – theprint.in

New Delhi: With the Modi government having decided to merge all eight existing rail services into a single Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS), the UPSC will now be holding an exclusive railway service exam, ThePrint has learnt. 

The exclusive UPSC exam for the new Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) will be first conducted in 2021. 

This year’s UPSC exam will follow the earlier pattern — in which officers for the Indian Railway Accounts Service, Indian Railway Traffic Service, Indian Railway and the Indian Railway Personnel Service will be recruited through the Civil Services Exam (CSE), while those for the other services will be recruited through the Indian Engineering Service (IES) exam. 

From next year onwards, however, there will be a common preliminary exam for the railway service but the main exam for engineers will be on their specialised domain expertise and not general studies, an official said on condition of anonymity. 

“It would follow the Indian Forest Service (IFS) exam pattern,” the official said. “IFS officers have the same preliminary exam as IAS, IPS among others but have a specialised mains paper exclusively designed for them.” 

UPSC will be intimated about the number of officers needed in the IRMS from 2021 onwards.

Senior UPSC officials, however, said the commission has received no such proposal.

“The government will decide how to go about it…We have not been informed or asked about anything yet,” an official said.

The commission also has no knowledge of whether the new IRMS will be considered a civil service or not. 

DoPT not consulted before Railways service merger

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which is the coordinating agency for all personnel matters, was not consulted by the Modi government before the controversial merger, ThePrint has learnt.

The DoPT looks after recruitment, regulation of service conditions, postings and transfers, deputation and training of civil servants, and comes directly under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).  

“They announced that they would consult the DoPT and UPSC after making the announcement,” said a DoPT official. “But despite the fact that the DoPT is the nodal agency for these matters, it was not consulted before the announcement was made.”

Officials are foreseeing a lot of problems in unifying the existing cadres of the eight services as well. “There will be issues of promotion, seniority, among others. All those need to be reconciled,” the official added.

Bihar Leaders Speak Out Against Scrapping of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir

Source: patnadaily.com

Patna: While the majority of Bihar, along with the nation, was celebrating the cancellation of Article 370 and Article 35A in Jammu & Kashmir, non-NDA parties, and Janata Dal – U which is part of the BJP-led NDA in Bihar, slammed the Modi government for its unilateral policy and ‘murdering democracy’ in India.

Former MP Pappu Yadav, the leader of Jan Adhikar Party (JAP), at a press conference in Patna on Monday, slammed the Modi-Shah duo saying the decision to scrap both articles in Jammu & Kashmir was imprudent and was done in haste by the ‘two idiots’.

“This is a clear assault on our constitution, our culture, and our democracy. The decision to scrap Article 370 and Article 35A was taken by two people who have no idea what they are doing. These two men (Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah) are hell-bent on destroying the nation from within and it is not unreasonable to ask why they have taken the route to dictatorship,” Yadav said.

Communist Party of India-ML general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya also, in a press release, slammed the Modi-Shah team for removing the two Articles and dividing the state into two without any consultation from other parties.

“Never before in the history of India such attempt has been made to trash the constitution. However, in this moment of crisis, the entire nation is with the people of Kashmir and nationwide protest will be organized to oppose this dangerous step taken by the NDA government,” the communist leader said while demanding the restoration of Article 370 and 35A without any delay and removal of all troops from the region.

Former Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi also opposed the move in Kashmir saying the draconian decision was taken when the Modi government was ‘under influence of alcohol’.

“This is pure and simple dictatorship and cannot be described any other way. I urge Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to step forward and do the right thing in this regard,” he said.

Though Kumar, who has been a staunch opponent of removal of Article 370 and 35A in Jammu & Kashmir, is yet to make a formal statement in this regard, other members of his party including K C Tyagi and Shyam Rajak have already voiced their anger over BJP’s sudden move.

“We have never favored what the BJP has done today and we will continue to oppose it in the coming days,” said Tyagi.