Govt to train Muslim youths for civil service exams

Trinamool Congress-led government has decided to train 100 youths from minority communities every year to crack IAS and West Bengal Civil Services Examinations.

The decision was taken after it was found that representation of the minority community students is poor in the civil services. “We have planned to introduce residential coaching for talented graduates from Muslim and other minority communities of the state. The training will be given by experienced faculties of Calcutta University and Presidency University,” state minority department officials said.

Bikram Sen, Secretary, Minority Affairs Department, said the students will be selected by the universities. “Our emphasis will be to select more girl students for the training, which will be of six months’ duration,” he said.

The training is likely to commence 6-8 months before the advertisement of the Civil Service Examination is published by the UPSC. An official said the Centre has appreciated the state government’s decision and agreed to help it financially for the scheme. “We have noticed that only a handful students from minority communities in the state crack civil services examinations conducted by the UPSC and West Bengal Public Service Commission. Though there is no dearth of talents in minority communities, there was no such concerted efforts to help the talented graduates to qualify the prestigious examinations,” said a senior official.

A 1981-batch WBCS official said out of 18 civil services officers appointed during his recruitment, only one belonged to Muslim community. “Each year, about 30-35 WBCS officers are recruited, of which only four to five are from minority communities,” the official added.

“Among the serving WBCS officers in West Bengal, only 50 odd are from minority communities,” said another senior official, who is a functionary of the WBSC officers association.

Till this year, the state’s WBCS cadre strength stood at 1,767. With 250 more posts of WBCS officers being created recently, the cadre strength will go up to 2017. Officials said the representation of Muslims from West Bengal in IAS fraternity too has been declining for years and not a single Muslim candidate from West Bengal could crack the IAS examination in the past several years.

“We are arranging the training for which selection will be based on the performance of the minority students at graduation level. The department is also planning to arrange similar training for the minority community students to help them crack joint entrance examinations,” an official said.