Yawar Hussain
Srinagar:DD, The aspirants of the coveted Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Services (JKAS) examination are usually anxious, but the upcoming preliminary examination this Sunday is turning out to be their worst nightmare, courtesy the elected government’s lackadaisical attitude.
Last month, a group of aspirants had met Chief Minister Omar Abdullah seeking a one-time relaxation in the upper age limit for the preliminary examination from the current 32 to 37 years. Subsequently, the CM had instructed the General Administration Department (GAD) to work on the proposal and grant a one-time relaxation.
However, the instructions were put in the cold storage while communication with the aspirants also faced an unofficial embargo, leading to growing anxieties about whether many of them (aspirants) would be able to sit in the examination or not.
Pushed to the wall, the aspirants tried reaching the officials in the GAD but to no avail. Most of the officials from the top level to the lower rung officers, in unison, didn’t respond to phone calls and messages from the aspirants. The media outlets did vent out the issue, but the passion was missing.
The aspirants then tried contacting the Chief Minister’s Advisor Nasir Aslam Wani, but to no avail.
“He kept assuring that the issue would be addressed, but he couldn’t give a date or even state where the issue was stuck. He seemed blinded like us,” an aspirant said.
Another aspirant said, “Being an aspirant for this exam is already mentally exhausting. We go through a lot of struggles with added societal, parental and personal pressures. Now this opaqueness and ambiguity of the governance system has multiplied our problems.”
The aspirant said that when the chief minister assured that age relaxation would be accorded, eligible aspirants thought that the exam would be postponed.
“After that the GAD department released a list of observers for the examination, which created panic among us. There are also rumours emanating that LG has rejected the file; others say it has sent it back for reconsideration. This frustrates us more. We feel like an orphan who isn’t owned by anybody.”
Aspirants said that MLA Zadibal and NC Chief Spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq couldn’t be of much help either.
“He didn’t pick up our calls. He responded to one message and then didn’t reply,” a female aspirant alleged.
However, on Tuesday, Sadiq took to the micro-blogging website X to post that the Chief Minister had given assent to the age relaxation proposal, and the ball was in the LG’s court.
“The Chief Minister’s Secretariat has confirmed to me that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah sb has approved and forwarded the age relaxation. The proposal has now been sent to Raj Bhawan for its consent,” Sadiq wrote.
Sadiq’s reply, which came just four days ahead of the examination, hasn’t resolved the issue as Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha is yet to give his assent. Meanwhile, many aspirants are in limbo. Some of them don’t know whether they will sit in the examination, while some, who are outside J&K, don’t know whether they should book tickets to travel back or not. Amid the uncertainty, their years of preparation is at the altar of becoming a casualty.
The aspirants are also worried that the lack of bonhomie between Lok Bhawan and the elected government might lead to further hiccups.
The upper age limit for the JKAS exam was brought down from 37 to 32 years by the BJPDP alliance government in 2018, and since then, a one-time relaxation for aspirants of the age of 35 years had become a practice followed every year by every administration.
