10,460 class III, IV vacancies being filled up through competitive exam
JAMMU: The Jammu and Kashmir Services Selection Board (SSB) is currently preparing to hold the history’s largest competitive test to fill up over 10,000 class 3 and class 4 vacancies in the Union Territory.
Vide notification No: 01 of 2020-21, SSB had advertised 8,575 class IV posts in the month of July 2020. As the process of online submission of forms lasted for over two months, well over four lakh candidates applied for the government jobs in this particular category.
Chairman SSB and an officer of the Kashmir Administrative Service, Khalid Jehangir, said that 8,575 vacancies existed in the UT cadre, the divisional cadre and the district cadre in Jammu and Kashmir. The Government decided to fill up these vacancies by way of holding a written exam and no interviews. As many as 4,04, 475 candidates applied. Similarly, there were 1,885 newly created vacancies of Accountants Assistants in Panchayat bodies for which 1,90,045 candidates applied.
While the 10th pass and the 12th pass candidates were eligible to apply for the class IV vacancies, graduation in any discipline was fixed as an essential qualification.
“We are shortly going to conduct the history’s largest written test in Jammu and Kashmir. Over four lakh candidates are eligible to write the exam which we are trying to conduct for the Class IV vacancies in the last month of October. Selection of the recruits will be made on the general merit in the written exam. Separately, we are going to hold another major written test for the 1,885 vacancies of Accounts Assistants (Panchayat)”, Jehangir told STATE TIMES. The SSB will be drawing the staff from different district offices which are currently preoccupied with the preparations for elections on around 13,000 vacancies of Panches and Sarpanches in the UT. “Things will become clear in a few days. If the government goes ahead to hold the part-2 of the Panchayat elections, we will have to wait. But if the Panchayat polls are deferred, we will be holding the written test for the class IV and Accounts Assistant vacancies in the last week of October”, another officer in SSB said. He asserted that both the exams would be fair and transparent and the candidates would be selected purely on the basis of their performance in these tests. There would be no viva voce.
Selection by SSB for 10,460 vacancies, initiated by the former Lieutenant Governor Girish Chandra Murmu, would be the first major employment drive after conversion of the State of Jammu and Kashmir into the two UTs of J&K and Ladakh in August 2019. On 29 September 2020, the newly constituted J&K Public Service Commission declared final results for 70 vacancies in the Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service, the Jammu and Kashmir Police (gazetted) Service and the Jammu and Kashmir Accounts (gazetted) Service. Their appointment orders are expected to be issued after the medical test in the current month.
Meanwhile, official sources said that the General Administration Department would be completing compilation of the KAS vacancy list in a couple of weeks. Sources said that the J&K PSC would start the process of filling up around 100 vacancies in the KAS in October or November.(Ahmed Ali Fayyaz)
