Regional Directors Conference of Staff Selection Commission Begins Today

The Annual Conference of the Regional Directors of Staff Selection Commission (SSC) was inaugurated here today by Shri N.K. Raghupathy, Chairman of the Commission.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chairman informed that over 29.92 lakh candidates have already taken the examinations conducted by the SSC during the year 2010-11 which is almost double the number of candidates who took the examinations in the previous year i.e. 2009-10 when 13.29 lakh candidates appeared for the exams. He said that if the same trend continues, about 40 lakh candidates may take examinations conducted by the SSC by the year end i.e. March 2011.

Shri Raghupathy said that the Commission has made special efforts for timely declaration of results and all results of the exams held till March 2010 have been declared. Some more results are in the offing, he added. The Chairman also informed that the number of selected candidates during 2010-11 (upto Nov-Dec) is 14898 (prov.).

The Chairman said that the vastly improved performance of the Commission and increase in candidates are directly attributable to the major changes and decisions effected during 2009-10 and the current year. The restructuring of all examinations led to enormous increase in job applicants posing additional challenges for the Commission but the regional offices were able to meet the challenge effectively, he said.

Shri Raghupathy said that the focus of the Commission at present is on completing the recruitment cycle (from advertisement to results) in six months for a single stage examination, in nine months for a two-stage examination and in twelve months for multi-stage examinations.

The Commission revamped its website in October last year and all the results are placed on the website promptly and the marks of the qualified and non-qualified candidates are also uploaded as early as possible. In about last 15 months, the revamped website has attracted over 40 lakh hits which shows that it has proved to be user friendly and a major source of information to the candidates.

Regional Offices have also been advised to place the admission certificates of all candidates on their websites at least two weeks before the date of the examination, with a view to inculcating a culture in the candidates to download them, obviating the need for postal dispatch of the admission certificates.

Enumerating the challenges before the Commission, the Chairman said that regional offices as well as the Commission are facing acute shortage of manpower and there is also a lack of professional expertise. He said that the Commission has initiated the process of ISO Certification of regional offices which will enable them to focus on increasing ‘customer satisfaction’ and continual improvement in their internal processes.

The Additional Secretary in the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Dr. S.K. Sarkar applauded the Commission’s performance specially during the last 18 months and said that reducing the cycle of examinations and recruitments is of vital importance and hoped that Commission will be able to achieve the targets in this regard.