NRA gets Cabinet's nod.
Common Eligibility Test for govt jobs.

Union cabinet has approved a proposal to set up a National Recruitment Agency which will conduct Common Eligibility Test (CET) for the selection to non-gazetted posts in the Central Government and public sector banks.

Recruit Reform

  • Presently, candidates preparing for government jobs have to appear for separate examinations which are conducted by separate recruiting agencies for various posts.

  • Candidates have to pay fees multiple times and also to travel long distances to appear in the exam.

  • These multiple recruitment examinations increase burden of expenditures, result awaiting time, and sometimes uncertainty in results as well.

  • A common eligibility test would enable these candidates to appear once and apply for multiple recruitment agencies for the higher level of examination. This will be a boon to all the candidates.

National Recruitment Agency

  • A multi-agency body called the National recruitment Agency (NRA) will conduct Common Eligibility Test (CET) to screen candidates for Group B and Group C (non-technical) posts.
  • NRA will have representatives of Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Finance/Department of Financial Services, the SSC, RRB & IBPS.
  • Being a specialist body, NRA would bring state-of-the art technology and best practices to the field of central government recruitment.

Availability and Access to Examination Centres

  • Availability of examination centres in every district would greatly enhance the access to the candidates living in far flung areas.
  • 117 aspirational districts would be focused to create examination infrastructure near to the residence of the candidates in near future.
  • This will help students from rural areas to access the examination centres and also it will boost their representation in the Central Government jobs.

Relief to Poor Candidates

  • Presently, candidate have to incur the costs of examination fees along with expenditure on traveling and lodging.
  • A single examination would eliminate these expenditures and enhance the presence of poor candidates.

Benefits to women candidates

  • Women candidates especially form rural areas had to face lots of constraints in appearing in the multiple examinations.
  • They had to take care of transportation, accompanying suitable person with them, security related issues, etc.
  • This move will help them in particular to choose centres near to their place and also with minimum spending on such examination costs.

Validity of CET score and number of attempts

  • The CET score of the candidate will be valid for a period of three years from the date of the declaration of result.
  • There will be no restrictions on the number of attempts  to be given by the candidates appear in CET subject to the upper age limit.
  • Relaxation in the upper age limit will be given to the candidates of SC/ST/OBC and other categories as per the extant policy of the government.

Standardized Testing

  • NRA shall conduct a separate CET each for the three levels of graduate, higher secondary (12th pass) and the matriculate (10th pass) candidates for those non-technical posts to which recruitment is presently carried out by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), the Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) and by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS).
  • Based on the screening done at the CET score level, final selection for recruitment shall be made through separate specialised Tiers (II, III etc) of examination which shall be conducted by the respective recruitment agencies.

Language of Test

  • CET will be available in a number of languages to facilitate people from different parts of the country to take the exam and have equal opportunity for selection.
  • The CET score could be shared with other recruiting agencies in the Central Government, State Governments/Union Territories, Public Sector Undertaking and Private Sector.

All such provisions will make this agency as an "independent, professional, specialist organization”.