New Delhi (21.07.2022): The government continues to grapple with a shortage of workforce still the number of vacancies advertised by the UPSC has fallen by more than 50 percent since 2013-14. The decline in vacancies advertised by the UPSC overall was revealed in the written reply by the minister of state for personnel Dr Jitendra Singh.
UPSC is the apex body responsible for conducting the UPSC Civil Services Examination and recruitment for other ‘group A’ positions under the Government of India including administrative (IAS), police (IPS), and foreign service (IFS) officers. Singh’s reply showed that in 2021-22 only 5,153 vacancies were advertised by the commission as opposed to 11,526 in 2013-14, a decrease of 54 percent. The number of vacancies witnessed a consistently sharp decline, from 8,347 vacancies in 2014-15 to 5,913 in 2019-20. The vacancies dropped to the lowest ever in the past decade in 2020-2021 with only 4,997 advertised vacancies. In the same year, 4,214 candidates were shortlisted for various positions, the government data shows.
According to statistics, a total of 8, 852 candidates were recommended by the UPSC in 2013-14; which dropped to 4, 399 in 2018-19 against 5,207 vacancies. Similarly, the number of candidates shortlisted came further down to 4,214 in 2020-21 and 4,119 in 2021-22. However, it saw a minor spike in 2019 at 5, 230 candidates.
