Mission Youth, Jammu and Kashmir, has launched scheme to support coaching of students for various competitive examinations including Civil Services Examination. The scheme, announced by Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha recently, will benefit 3000 meritorious and competitive students for coaching facilities, educational support and other requirements. CEO Mission Youth and Secretary, Tribal Affairs Department, Dr Shahid Iqbal informed that the draft guidelines proposed by Mission Youth have been approved by the Finance department and the scheme is now being formally launched. This will cover various competitive examinations being conducted by Union Public Service Commission, J&K Public Service Commission, Service Selection Board, Staff Selection Commission and various other recruitment authorities.Dr Shahid added that notification is being issued for empanelment of coaching institutes of national repute and outstanding local institutes having proven track record and required facilities as well as infrastructure for best coaching facilities to be offered to students. The desirous students will have to register on the designated portal and selection will be made through an elaborate screening process or qualifying test based on the pattern of competitive examinations and prescribed syllabus. The selection will be done on quarterly basis to ensure that all examinations are covered and students appearing for next year are provided required support.The eligibility criteria for students would be that the candidates must be domicile of Jammu and Kashmir, family income not exceeding Rs 8.00 Lakh and having secured requisite percentage of marks in the qualifying examination prescribed for applying in a particular competitive examination or recruitment. In order to ensure gender balance and focus on girl child education as well as providing platform to women students a total of 30% seats are reserved for girl students/ candidates. Besides, ten percent additional weightage shall be given to the candidates who have already qualified preliminary level of a particular examination.
The students appearing for competitive examinations like Civil Services Examination including IAS, IPS, IFS, IRS, IFoS, IRS-Customs of UPSC and JKAS, JKPSC, Accounts services etc conducted by J&K PSC, national level examinations of Staff Selection Commission, UT level examinations of J&K Service Selection Board and other similar recruitment authorities / commissions at central level eligible for these examinations will have to register on the designated portal of Mission Youth providing specific details and uploading supporting documents. The candidates have been advised to keep their documents upto date for uploading on the portal. The scheme will cover tuition expenses of coaching and the students selected through screening process shall be eligible to choose the institution of their choice from the list of empaneled coaching institutions of repute. A comprehensive selection cum screening process has also been finalised for empanelment of coaching institutions in a transparent manner including periodic reviews and concurrent evaluation. The selected students will have to meet the requirement of minimum attendance to be maintained.Deputy Director Mission Youth, Dr Maqbool and OSD Tabish Saleem have been designated as nodal officers for implementation of scheme while as an inter-departmental committee with members from departments of finance, school education and higher education as members apart from representatives of registered associations has also been constituted.Pertinently, Mission Youth is also working with various stakeholder organisations and departments to initiate similar coaching for NEET students which is targeting to cover 5000 students every year. Residential coaching institutions at Srinagar and Jammu are also being planned for establishment of state-of-the-art coaching facilities and residential accommodation.CEO Mission Youth has appealed the students and youth to register with Mission Youth for availing benefits of various schemes.