The government proposes a single exam for all government jobs. In the budget 2020, presented by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the government intends to introduce major reforms in recruitment to non-gazetted posts in governments and public sector banks.
At present, candidates appear for various exams held under the discretion of the recruiting organization or exam agencies like UPSC and SSC. " This places enormous burden on time, effort and cost of young people," said Finance Minister in the Lok Sabha while presenting the budget.
To mitigate the hardship faced by the candidates, the government proposes to form a National Recruitment Agency, which would also be referred to as NRA.
The NRA will be an independent, professional, specialist organisation and will conduct an exam, which would be known as the Common Eligibility Test, for selection to government jobs.
Another major reform proposed by the government is to implement computer based test for selection to government jobs. As of now most government recruitment test are held in computer based mode, though not all. With the implementation of this the old pattern of exam where candidates mark their responses in OMR sheets, will be stopped.
For the convenience of candidates and to make them acquainted with the exam pattern, the government also proposes to establish a test-centre in every district, particularly in the aspirational Districts.
The NRA would be in line with the National Testing Agency (NTA) except that NTA manages various entrance exams and NRA, as per what has been said by Finance Minister, will conduct a single exam for all the government sectors.
