Haryana disagrees with PM’s opinion to abolish interviews for non-gazetted government jobs

NEW DELHI: BJP-ruled Haryana is among the only two states which are “not in complete agreement” with the Modi government’s initiative to abolish interviews for all non-gazetted government jobs at the Group B, C and D levels.

The Centre has recorded the same in a minutes of meeting held between Ministry of Personnel and Principal Secretaries of all states on April 22 in Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced last year that Centre from January 1 will abolish interviews for all Group ‘C’, Group ‘D’, for non-gazetted posts of Group ‘B’ category and all such equivalent posts. The Centre subsequently wrote to chief ministers to implement the same.

The minutes of the April 22 meeting say that Haryana’s Manohar Lal Khattar government has told the Centre that it has abolished the interviews at Group D level but retained interviews for Group C level posts, only bringing the weightage of interview down to less than 12% of total marks, while changing nothing for the Group B non-gazetted posts. “Following two states have not completely agreed with the proposal: Haryana and Mizoram,” the minutes noted.

The Tarun Gogoi and Mamata Bannerjee governments told the Centre that the matter will be considered when the new governments comes into power after the ongoing elections while the PDPBJP government in J&K said the matter is now under active consideration.

Uttar Pradesh has said the matter was still under discussion in its departments. The minutes note that 16 states have actively implemented the policy of abolition of interviews, including Bihar, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Eight states, including Delhi and Andhra, did not respond.