The Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) implemented its decision to discontinue interviews for selection to junior posts in Central Ministries and Departments, 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 said. He was addressing a Press Conference here today highlighting the major milestones achieved in the last one year. He has also decided to write a D.O. letter for the second time as reminder to Chief Ministers of all the States urging them to take a lead in carrying forward the initiative for abolishing interviews for selection to such posts where these are not required. It may be recalled that he had earlier written a similar letter to Chief Ministers of all the States on 29th September 2015 and prior to that Union Secretary, DoPT had written a letter on the same subject to Chief Secretaries of States on 4th September 2015.
Briefing the media, Dr Jitendra Singh also said, while some of the states like Maharashtra and Rajasthan have made appreciable progress in discontinuing interviews for recruitment to several posts, the other States were also being persuaded to take up this initiative seriously. Besides bringing in transparency and ease to the process of selection, Dr Jitendra Singh said, abolition of interviews would also go a long way in cutting down the expenditure from state exchequer incurred in carrying out a selection process. For such posts where a special skill is required, the skill test will be done which would only be qualifying and would not be counted while calculating merit, he said.Throwing a light on the initiatives taken during the year, Dr. Jitendra Singh said that the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), in collaboration with National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) has launched the initiative of simplification of forms for convenience of citizens and providing trust based efficient public service delivery. The overall aim of this initiative is to make the forms as simple and small (a single A4 size page) as possible for the beneficiary and contents of the forms should be easy to understand and complete, he added. Dr. Jitendra Singh said there are more pensioners now than serving employees and Government is working on deriving a scheme for utilizing the experience and expertise of the retired employees.
Discussing the achievement of Department of Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh said that the department has made immense progress in the year 2015 and also announced that the "Chandrayaan-2", India’s Lunar Probe, will land on the surface of moon in 2017. The Minister said that the ‘Hall of Nuclear Energy’ will be inaugurated in Pragati Maidan in Delhi on 15th January, 2016. This will serve the purpose of disseminating information on nuclear energy in Delhi, as the headquarters of the Department of Atomic Energy is not located in Capital city. Shri Sanjay Kothari, Secretary, DoPT, and Shri Devendra Chaudhary, Secretary, DARPG and senior officers of the Ministry were also present.