After fiasco, Maharashtra announces recruitment exams on October 24 and 31
The recruitment exams to fill up vacant positions in the Class C category will now be conducted on October 24 and for the Class D category it will be held on October 31, Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope announced on Monday
Three days after the fiasco, the Maharashtra government has declared a fresh schedule for recruitment exams to fill up over 6,000 vacant posts in the state health department. The exams to fill up vacant positions in the Class C category will now be conducted on October 24 and for the Class D category it will be held on October 31, state health minister Rajesh Tope announced on Monday.
The health minister held a review meeting with the senior officials after which fresh dates were declared.
The state government was in an embarrassing situation when it postponed the recruitment exams at the eleventh hour. It had blamed an outsourced firm — Nyasa Communication Private Limited (NCPL) — for the fiasco.
Earlier, the exams were scheduled on September 25 and 26 but owing to lack of preparations the health minister had to declare postponement of examination on late Friday evening, which also led to aggrieved reactions.
Nearly 800,000 applicants have enrolled for the recruitment examinations for filling up 6,205 vacant posts for Class C and D categories. The vacant posts under Class C category comprise staff nurses, auxiliary nursing midwives, pharmacists, laboratory technicians, X-Ray technicians, laboratory assistants and others while Class D category posts include ward boys, sweepers and other supporting staff.
“We have decided to hold examinations for Class C category positions on October 24 and for Class D category positions on October 31 in a meeting held to discuss preparations and decide the next schedule. Both the dates have been chosen to avoid any risk as they are Sundays and availability of schools won’t be a problem,” Tope told reporters in Jalna on Monday.
“We have directed the firm to prepare a dashboard, made available exam centre wise students list and permissions from the schools that are going to be used as exam centres. We have also made it mandatory to provide hall tickets to the students nine days in advance,” he added.
NCPL is part of a list of empanelled firms prepared by the state information technology (IT) department. As per the procedure, the departments will have to select the firms from the empanelled list of firms for holding recruitment examinations.
On taking action against the firm, the health minister said that the action will be decided by the IT department as they have empanelled it and the role of the health department is limited to setting up exam papers.
He assured to hold the examinations transparently and asked students to approach the police if someone offers any help through illegitimate means against money.
An audio clip has gone viral in which two people can be heard making various claims related to recruitment exams to be conducted in Amravati.
The health minister said they don’t know the authenticity of the audio clip and have asked the police to verify. “I am not aware of the authenticity of the audio clip and the police will verify the same. I have personally spoken to Dr Arti Singh, Amravati police commissioner in this regard and will also write to the home minister Dilip Walse Patil to ensure action is taken against the offenders,” he said in response to a question.
The exercise for filling up the vacant positions was started as part of the state’s preparations for the potential third wave that may hit by December or January.