Gandhinagar, Thursday: In a letter sent to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Gujarat Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi today strongly protested recent changes in the rules of Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination, disallowing writing the test in Gujarati. The decision would ruin the dreams of thousands of candidates from Gujarat appearing the UPSC examinations for various civil services posts.
Reflecting the anguish of a large number of affected candidates, Mr. Modi sought Dr Singh’s immediate intervention to take quick remedial measures in the matter.
Earlier, marks obtained in the English language paper were not counted for deciding the merit. With the introduction of new rules, marks obtained in English ‘comprehension’ and ‘précis’ are proposed to be counted for deciding the final merit.
A candidate will not be able to write the ‘essay’ in Gujarati or in any other language. He has to now compulsorily write it in English or Hindi only.
In case a candidate had his graduation in any of the ‘approved’ regional language, then he may opt to answer all the question papers (except Section-2 of Paper-1 on English comprehension and précis) in that particular language. However, there should be at least 25 candidates writing in that language. The criteria for writing answer in English or Hindi only if the number of total candidates in the ‘approved’ language was less than 25.
As per the new rules, if the number of candidates appearing for UPSC had graduated in Gujarati medium is less than 25, they could not write the essay or précis in Gujarat.
Mr. Modi described the new rule as a ‘language bias’ towards Gujarati, because a large number of students, studying up to schools in regional language and then shift to English language at graduate and higher level, could not be as proficient in English or Hindi as in their regional language only.
He said a large number of poor, tribal and other socially backward candidates belong to this disadvantageous section, owing to the new rule, spoiling their chances in civil services.
