The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will be issuing the Civil Services Notification 2019 to recruit the officers in the All India Services and various Central Civil Services. Every year, the UPSC issue its civil service notification for around 900 posts and in these 900 posts for several civil services, 180 posts are reserved for the Indian Administrative Services (IAS). As per the Baswan committee report, UPSC needs to recruit 180 IAS Officers up to the year 2020 to overcome the vacant posts created due to the heavy retirements up to 2020.
This will be the first Civil Services Notification after the Parliament has passed the 10% quota in the government services for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) of the General Category. There are possibilities that the UPSC will include this reservation in the upcoming civil service notification.
It is expected that the UPSC Notification will be delayed to incorporate these changes because the UPSC only issues the notification once it is approved by the ministry of personnel. The other very important point which is worth mentioning here that there will be a 10 % reservation for the EWS of General Category for the post of IAS officers. It means that there will be around 18 positions of IAS Officers which will be reserved for the EWS of General Category. This can create a real dividend for the candidates.
The other important point here to be noted that these positions are not under the unreserved category and specifically belong to the EWS of the General Category. This means that the post reserved can only be given to the EWS candidates. No other category candidates can claim these reserved posts.
As we can see that the Lok Sabha Elections 2019 are round the corner and the central government will hope to reap the benefits of this amendment. So the central government will expedite the process to include the new reservation provisions in the upcoming UPSC Civil Services notification.
The same reservation will be applied to the number of positions of IPS, IFoS, IFS and Central Civil Services. This will bring a real relief for the poors among the general category and in addition to that this is not at the expense of the socially and educationally backward candidates.
But, it will change the dynamics of the UPSC Civil Services Exam 2019 because most of the candidates will fall in this new reservation category and the competition in this category will be fierce. On the other hand, nothing much will change for the candidates of General Category because now they will be competing for the rest of the seats which they were doing in the past.
This reservation can change the cutoff and the final merit in the IAS Exam as a whole. There will be a new category of EWS and hence there will be new cutoff. The point which is little technical in nature is that if a candidate claim the status of EWS but could not get the better off to the IAS Prelims cutoff for the EWS category, will he able to compete in the open category for unreserved. If yes, there will be no change in the General Category candidates’ future because the best 10% were ahead of them in the past also. But if the answer is no, there is a deep concern to claim the category or compete in the unreserved category only.
The time will tell the real operational details of the UPSC when it will announce the cutoff for the IAS Exam 2019 next year. But for the time being the UPSC should release the methodology for calculating the merits and cutoff of each and every stage of the UPSC Civil Services Exam 2019.
Keeping in mind all of these reasons, we can say that the UPSC Civil Services notification will be delayed.
