It has been proposed in Rajya Sabha on 14th March 2018 to introduce a Common Eligibility Test (CET) to shortlist candidates for vacancies of Group ‘B’ (Non-Gazetted) and below level posts in the Government of India viz. SSC, Railways, Banking, etc;

As stated in the report - The Common Eligibility Test (CET) proposed to be conducted from next year is an ambitious endeavor of the Commission and in the long term will benefit both the Government and the job aspirants. It will reduce the number of examinations conducted by various agencies of the government and will save significant amount of money spent on conducting these examinations by different recruiting agencies

The important recommendations given in the report are :

(A) Through this exercise, the entire recruitment system would be revamped and rationalized in two distinct stages, i.e.

Tier-I - a Common Screening Test subsuming the preliminary Tier-I examinations conducted by all recruiting agencies of the Government of India, viz. SSC, Railways, Banking, etc; and

Tier-II – the main Examinations to be conducted independently by the concerned recruiting agencies.

(B) Candidates would mandatorily have to register themselves on a dedicated portal developed by the National Career Services (NCS) of the Ministry of Labour & Employment, which would generate a unique ID for each candidat

(C) CETs would be conducted at three levels:

• Matriculation Level
• Higher Secondary (10+2) Level and
• Graduation Level.

About 5 crore candidates are estimated to register for all the three levels of CETs making it the largest examination in the world.

(D) It has been decided that in the Financial Year 2018-19, only one level of CETs, i.e. at the Graduation Level, would be conducted in February, 2019. In the successive year(s), all the three levels of examination would be conducted.

(E) The Government proposes to include only those examinations in CET which are presently 33 conducted in English and Hindi medium only. Later on, once they acquire necessary capability to conduct examinations in Eighth Schedule languages, only then they will start conducting CET in those languages.

(F) The Government has proposal to make CET scores valid for a period of two years. The candidates would use their scores for appearing in Tier-II examinations

(G) There is also scope for the CET scores to be used by State Governments / Public Sector Undertakings / Private Sector for recruitment of their manpower

As the SSC has been entrusted with the responsibility for conducting Common Eligibility Test (CET) from next year, the Commission has got its work cut out to conduct the exam in a fair and efficient manner, free from all malpractices