by Malik Javid

After examination, JKSSB asked for representations from candidates on doubtful questions to revise its keys and it received more than 21000 representations through online mode

163rd Board meeting of J&K Services Selection Board

Gone are the days when the government job was considered as a matter of privilege for people with political patronage, money and muscle. Now the times have changed, we are living in a meritocratic society, where our family lineage, caste and social status is no longer a hurdle in getting a government job. Instead, job has become the product of sweat, toil and tears, that one puts in to crack a competitive exam before securing a job.

Now in a world full of opportunities, Jammu and Kashmir is still lagging behind in providing timely job opportunities to educated youth. With the almost paltry presence of the private sector on the ground, providing employment has become a constant headache for the government. This is quite an issue because all educated youth have pinned their hopes on earning a livelihood by getting a government job, someday.

As per the recent data, Jammu and Kashmir’s unemployment rate of 46.3 per cent among the educated category is the second-highest unemployment after Kerala where the percentage stood at 47 per cent. Now the onus lies is on recruiting agencies like JKSSB and JKPSC to speed up their advertising process for the vacant posts in government sectors to tame this galloping rate of unemployment before it goes out of control.

Cutting long story short, I need to raise through this space, one important issue. More than two weeks back JKSSB held OMR based MCQ examination for Jammu and Kashmir FAA (finance accounts officer) in a cordial and transparent manner, much to the expectations of all candidates. But what astonished the candidates most was the standard of questions asked in the paper.

Ask anyone who had appeared in this exam, he/she is in a complaining mood rather than in complementing mood for JKSSB in holding this exam on time. The outpouring of anger against the JKSSB FAA paper on social media platforms by candidates is genuine, considering the disparity in syllabus and standard of paper set by authorities, these grievances should be taken positive feedback for future exams. The irony is that JKSSB had framed the syllabus for this post on IAS pattern, based on topics from interdisciplinary subjects like science, mathematics, statistics, accountancy etc. So candidates had to toil hard to read and understand these multiple subjects using mainly digital platforms like YouTube for it.

But when it came to the framing of a questions paper, they seem to have forgotten the syllabus altogether. In turn; they set a paper with a standard lower than a class four post. A candidate who had worked for years on the syllabus had no advantage over a person who had worked for one month to clear this exam. In fact, both kinds of students performed the same.

Personally, I don’t have any qualms about the standard of paper set by the examiner. We had to swallow this bitter pill as the examination is all about catching you off guard and this time JKSSB surprised candidates in fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar’s style.

If the standard of question paper wasn’t enough to demoralise the candidates, gross errors had crept into questions and options that certainly made the matters worse for candidates. It seems JKSSB had not done any proofreading of this paper before finalising it.

The question paper had a few questions with confusing language, some questions had more than one correct answer given in options and there were around two to three questions in the paper where the correct answer was written more than once in options. Say, for example, questions were like –  The capital of India is? Four options given were (a)Bangalore (b)Delhi,(c)Kolkata and (d) Delhi. How can you expect a candidate to mark this question in the OMR sheet? Caught in a quandary, either candidate had to mark option(b) or (d) else they to ignore this question as one can’t mark both options. This goes against the rules of examination, so the best option left for candidates was to ignore this question and leave it to JKSSB to nullify this question altogether.

Malik Javid

After examination, JKSSB asked for representations from candidates on doubtful questions to revise its keys and it received more than 21000 representations through online mode but when the revised key was uploaded a few days back, questions that deserved to be corrected have remained as such.

Fractions determine the merit in JKSSB exams. I have seen people falling short of selection by the barest of margins like 0.25 in many exams. So JKSSB needs to revise the revised answer key again. They can’t brush these mistakes under the carpet as this will spoil the fate of thousands of candidates who are hanging by thread to figure in the final selection list. If they don’t do so, then the only option left for candidates is to take matters to the judiciary, which nobody wants.

(The author, a post-graduate in chemistry, is working with the school education. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Kashmir Life.)

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