Itanagar: At a time when many state government recruitment agencies in the country hit the headlines but for wrong reasons, Arunachal Pradesh Staff Selection Board (APSSB) is scripting new records in terms of examination process for Group-‘C’ posts. All credit goes to IAS officer Santosh Kumar, Secretary-cum-Controller of Examination, APSSB.

An alleged scam in the LDC examination held on February 2, 2020 maligned the reputation of the board. It was the third examination after the establishment of APSSB in 2018 through an Act of the state Assembly. Youths took to the streets, seeking immediate arrest of those involved in the scam. Probes were ordered.

Meanwhile, understanding the volatile situation and the growing dissatisfaction among youths, the state government immediately decided to revamp the entire Board and bring in a new set of officers. Prasant Lokhande, IAS, was brought in as chairman and Santosh Kumar, IAS, as Secretary-cum-Controller of Examination. The mandate for the new team was to restore the faith of aspirants in the Board.

Kumar said: “When I took over as Secretary-cum-Controller of Examination, there was a huge challenge to bring back the confidence of youths of the state in the newly created Board. We found that the Board is in its formative years. There were no Standing Operating Procedures (SOPs) and other guidelines in place for the conduct of examination.”

“More than this, it was the work culture which was not fit for specialized agency like this. I felt that this is not a normal department where any hanky-panky things will work, but this is a place where absolute uprightness and integrity is required. Slowly, the work of transforming the Board began as a team,” he said.

The initial days were not easy. “On one hand, we were trying to understand the entire recruitment process as it was completely new for me; on the other, most of the staff was facing grilling by probe agencies. Since, there were no SOPs in place we had to start from the scratch. This is where we started consulting other Boards and Commissions but suddenly lockdown was introduced and offices were closed,” he said.

The first examination after forming an all-new committee was conducted in September 2020 for various technical posts under TRIHMS. “We were both excited as well as apprehensive. After the examination used to finish at 1 pm, a committee of experts verified question papers and answer keys to avoid any controversy after the result regarding correctness of questions,” he said.

The results were announced the same day as well. The final result was put on the website at 4 am in the coming morning within 15 hours after the examination. Another unique thing about this examination was that in order to ensure that RTI applications are reduced and total transparency is maintained, the Board also decided to go for full disclosure and provided all the details related to examination including individual OMR sheet and mark sheet apart from the cut-off marks and answer key.

This exercise was repeated in February 2021 when the Board conducted examinations for various technical posts under the Department of IPR. This examination was also conducted successfully and the Board surpassed its own previous record and declared the result of the examination within nine hours.

What’s noteworthy here is that SSC or Staff Selection Commission (SSC) normally takes 3-5 years to complete the recruitment cycle. Similarly, Bihar SSC has not declared the final result of the LDC examination conducted in March 2019. The same is the case with UP SSC. APSSB has, however, set an example worth emulating for others. /BI/

By Sweta Bharti