JP Nadda lauds National Recruitment Agency, calls it 'step to help millions of youths'

BJP national President JP Nadda has lauded the Union Cabinet's approval on setting up a National Recruitment Agency (NRA) which will be assigned the task of conducting the Common Eligibility Test (CET) for non-gazetted posts in the central government including Railways and public sector banks. Nadda asserted the NRA will bring transparency and efficiency in the recruitment process.

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What is NRA?

The Central Government on Wednesday decided to set up a National Recruitment Agency, which was proposed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget 2020. The Union Budget had then mentioned that the new agency will be an "independent, professional, specialist organisation and will conduct an exam, which would be known as the Common Eligibility Test", for selection to government jobs.

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar addressed a press conference on Wednesday and inform that the decision will benefit the young job seekers.

NRA will have representatives of Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Finance/Department of Financial Services, the Staff Selection Commission (SSC), Railway Recruitment Control Board (RRB) & Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS). It is envisioned that the NRA would be a specialist body bringing state-of-the-art technology and best practices to the field of Central Government recruitment. The CET score of the candidate shall be valid for a period of three years from the date of declaration of the result. The best of the valid scores shall be deemed to be the current score of the candidate. There shall be no restriction on the number of attempts to be taken by a candidate to appear in the CET subject to the upper age limit.

The Government has sanctioned a sum of Rs. 1517.57 crore for the NRA. The expenditure will be undertaken over a period of three years. Apart from setting up the NRA, costs will be incurred for setting up examination infrastructure in the 117 Aspirational Districts.

PM Modi hails decision

After the decision by the cabinet, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also praised the cabinet's decision calling it a boon for crores of youngsters. Taking to Twitter, he said that the Common Eligibility Test shall "eliminate multiple tests and save precious time as well as resources". According to the PM, the NRA will give a big boost to transparency as well, as it seeks to streamline the present situation in which candidates seeking government jobs have to appear for separate examinations conducted by multiple recruiting agencies.

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