The Andhra Pradesh government on Saturday issued a formal order dispensing with the process of interviews for all future recruitments into government service, including the executive posts, with the aim of ensuring transparency in the selection process. The new system, wherein only written examinations would be conducted for all categories of posts, including Group-1 services, would be applicable for all recruitments to be notified from now on. The official order was issued more than twenty months after the decision was taken by Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. On October 17, 2019, CM Jagan, at a high-level meeting on recruitments, took the decision to do away with personal interviews for all recruitments through the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC).
Accordingly, APPSC Secretary PSR Anjaneyulu wrote to the General Administration Department (GAD) seeking necessary action on the issue. A top official in the General Administration Department said the new initiative was a "major reform", aimed at improving transparency and reducing subjectivity in all the recruitments in government cadre. In an order on Saturday, Principal Secretary (Services and Human Resources Management) Shashi Bhushan Kumar said the government decided to dispense with the interview process "to maintain utmost transparency and ensure complete trust of the competing candidates in the entire selection process".
In 2011, the then united Andhra Pradesh government headed by N Kiran Kumar Reddy did away with the interview process for all subordinate services as part of the reforms introduced in APPSC recruitments. The reforms were implemented as per the recommendations of a high-level committee headed by the then Special Chief Secretary J Satyanarayana. Written tests and interviews were, however, retained for executive posts like deputy collector, Deputy Superintendent of Police, commercial taxes officer, regional transport officer and the like. Henceforth, these recruitments too will happen through written examination only.
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