Itanagar: The Arunachal Pradesh government has decided to constitute a high-level ministerial committee to examine and study the inclusion of permanent residence certificate (PRC) as a requisite document for appearing in the state civil service exams.
The decision to constitute the committee was taken in a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Thursday.
The ministerial committee will examine various aspects of the matter including the practice of PRC being made mandatory by other states including Mizoram, Manipur Nagaland, etc, an official statement from the chief minister’s office said.
The committee will also consider previous report(s) submitted to the government in the matter and give its recommendations in a time-bound manner, the statement added.
Meanwhile, in a bid to bring about reforms in the state public service commission, the cabinet on the day also decided to compulsorily include regional topics pertaining to Arunachal Pradesh in specific, and North East India in general, in the syllabus of competitive exams conducted in the state.
The cabinet further decided to amend the provisions regarding marks in various subjects and number of persons to be called for interview and the same will be aligned in accordance with prevailing rules governing the selection by UPSC.
The administrative reforms department shall take steps to amend the existing office memorandum dated June 10, June 2022 and also study the practice in UPSC etc. regarding providing information in respect of (i) marks obtained for each question and (ii) marks obtained by third party.
The department had on June 10 last issued an office memorandum which stated that “in case the number of candidates with at least 33% marks in each paper is less than three times the number of vacancies, all candidates securing 33% marks in each paper shall be called for the viva-voce test.”
For appointment of chairman and members for the Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC), the cabinet decided that the provisions of Article 316 of the Constitution will be followed.
The CM Khandu led cabinet also decided to frame regulations to strengthen the grievance redressal mechanism of APPSC.
It may be mentioned here that the All Nyishi Students’ Union (ANSU) has been demanding the state government to make it mandatory for the aspirants to have a PRC to appear in the state civil services examinations.
The ANSU had reasoned that the present trend of allowing non-Arunachalee candidates to appear in the state civil services examinations poses a great threat to the indigenous candidates.
Restructuring of Health Facilities
The state cabinet during its sitting on Thursday also approved “Restructuring of Health Facilities in the state vis-à-vis Indian Public Health Standards Guidelines and Human Resource distribution as per IPHS norms to these categories of health facilities.”
The cabinet also approved developing a state Human Resource (HR) Index and transfer policy linked to Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) norms to move towards the rational deployment of human resources in the state.
The HR Index is a statistical tool used to measure a state or country’s overall achievement in its social and economic dimensions while IPHS are a set of uniform standards envisaged to improve the quality of health care delivery.
Earlier, the cabinet was briefed on the decisions and deliberations of the first ever national conference of chief secretaries which was presided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Himachal Pradesh.
Khandu instructed all the ministers to hold meetings every week with their respective commissioners and secretaries to carry forward the agenda of the conference.
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