The Khasi Students Union (KSU) met with the Director General of Police, Idashshia Nongrang, today to oppose the use of reservations for candidates in the police’s recruitment process.
In an office memorandum from December 2023, the police department has mandated that the total number of candidates to be invited to take the written examination shall be 20 times the total number of vacancies belonging to each category of candidates based on the state’s reservation policy.
The KSU’s employment monitoring cell argued, however, that all those who pass the physical efficiency test (PET) should be allowed to sit the written test afterwards. A predetermined reservation might prioritise quotas rather than selecting the most qualified candidate, the pressure group opined.
It also questioned whether it is right for a physical test to be the determining factor for who is called for the written exam when a candidate’s analytical skills and knowledge might be more important than physical attributes for certain branches of the police. To support this argument, the KSU pointed to the process to select an unarmed branch (UB) Constable, where the PET is worth 100 marks and written exam 300 and to therefore select candidates for the written test based purely on their PET score would be “illogical”.
