The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Civil Services aspirants have a tough time

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Saturday, Jan 03, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Civil Services aspirants have a tough time

Aloysius Xavier Lopez

Lack of sufficient application forms, CRF stamps disappoints many

CHENNAI: With only three days left to apply for the Civil Services Examination, many candidates in the city are experiencing difficulty in getting application forms and Central Recruitment Fee stamps of the required denomination at some designated post offices.

The filled-in application forms for the preliminary examinations should reach the office of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in New Delhi not later than January 5.

There was steady stream of candidates on Friday to purchase the forms at the Chennai GPO and Anna Salai, St. Thomas Mount, T. Nagar and Tambaram HPOs.

Many candidates were able to get only smaller denominations of the CRF stamps, as the required denomination was not available.

Some of them sent their applications with the smaller denomination CRF stamps as the mode of payment towards the examination fee.

This despite the UPSC specifying that only one CRF stamp of Rs.50 denomination should be used. Many such candidates in Chennai were concerned that they ran the risk of their applications being rejected on this count.

“The employees of the Anna Salai HPO said that CRF stamps of the required denomination would be available only on Tuesday. They asked me to go to other designated post offices,” said K.S. Jayaprakash, a candidate.

When contacted, an official at the HPO said that they had made the required arrangements later in the evening to make CRF stamps and application forms available after realising the gravity of the situation.

Lack of sufficient number of application forms was another concern.

“As the forms were not available in the post office, I was asked to get the form from other post offices in the city,” said J. Saravanan, another candidate.

“We send monthly statement to the UPSC seeking replenishment of the stock of application forms. The scarcity of application forms in some post offices on Friday occurred because the monthly statement has not reached the UPSC yet,” said an official at one of the designated post offices.

The official added that such exigencies would not arise if the UPSC informed the post offices well ahead about the schedules of its various examinations.

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