New Delhi: Civil services aspirants will be facing a different pattern of assessment from next year onwards, with the introduction of Services Aptitude Test (CSAT). Government has given its approval to the proposal of introducing an aptitude test in place of the existing preliminary examination to shortlist candidates for the main exam.
The newly introduced Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) will have two objective-type papers with particular emphasis on testing their aptitude for civil services as well as on ethical and moral dimension of decision-making of the candidate. Both these papers having equal weightage will be common to all candidates in place of the one common paper (general awareness) and one optional paper (any particular subject of choice) under the existing system, which lays greater emphasis on subject knowledge.
Presently, the change will be effective only for the first stage of the Civil Services Examination (CSE) from 2011 onwards. The second and third stages - CS (Main) Examination and interview respectively - may remain the same till a committee of experts goes into various aspects of the entire system and submits its report. After verifying about the change for the first stage of CSE, Prithviraj Chavan, Minister of State for personnel has told the Lok Sabha on Wednesday that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has approved the proposal for introduction of CSAT in place of the existing CS (Preliminary) Examination.
