Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, July 23: 100 IAS officers had come under the CBI scanner for their alleged involvement in various corruption cases while the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) had accorded sanction to prosecute 66 of them.
This was disclosed here today by Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh in a written response to a question in the Rajya Sabha.
Dr Jitendra Singh further informed that CBI had sent requests seeking sanction to prosecute 100 IAS officers, 10 CSS Group A officers and nine CBI Group A officers but the request was granted in case of 66 IAS officers, 8 CSS Group A officers and six CBI Group A officers . “It is stated that all the aforesaid requests in which sanction for prosecution has been received are still under trial. Hence, there is no input for conviction, acquittal and discharge,” he added.
In reply to another question, Dr Jitendra Singh disclosed that Government has decided to revise the syllabus for IAS and Civil Services Examination. The decision has been taken in response to a number of representations received in the DoPT , he said adding that an Expert Committee is being constituted to examine various issues related to the Civil Services Examination. The Committee would comprehensively examine different issues raised from time to time which included eligibility, pattern, scheme, syllabus and age limit for the exam, he added.
Dr Jitendra Singh also acknowledged that besides the scheme of Civil Services Examination, a number of representations received in DoPT referred to relaxation in the maximum age limit for taking the exam as well as setting the question papers in regional languages for the ‘Preliminary Examination’. As far as the ‘Main Examination’ is concerned, the question papers are of conventional/essay type and candidates have the option to answer all the question papers, except the qualifying language papers, in any of the languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India or in English, he added.
Pertinent to mention that for quite some time there has been a strong section of opinion that the pattern and syllabus of Civil Services Examination is loaded in favour of the candidates coming from mathematics and technical streams as a result of which, a large number of candidates qualifying the exam are engineers and doctors, which leaves the candidates with background of humanities at a disadvantage. Taking cognizance of this view, Dr Jitendra Singh had some time back, said that the IAS exam pattern needs to be revisited and revised so that it is suitable for producing the kind of administrators and bureaucrats who could live up to the requirements of the 21st century Indian society and carry forward the Modi Government’s mission of “Maximum Governance, Minimum Government”.
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