The State Level Police Recruitment Board (SLPRB), headed by the Director General of Police, is conducting the recruitment drive.
The Assam Police has said the written examination to appoint over 9,100 constables will be held as scheduled on February 20, despite calling more candidates in order to meet the criterion of at least 5 candidates for one post, officials said on Tuesday.
An Assam Police spokesperson said that there has been no deferment in the date of the examination, which was scheduled on February 20. "Though there will be more candidates, the date of examination has not been changed and it will be held as per original schedule," the official said.
A press statement issued by the Assam Police on Sunday said the results declared for the 9,171 posts of constable were reviewed by the SLPRB and it was found that the "actual number of people called for the written exam has fallen much below the ratio of 1:5 as announced in the original advertisement".
"The SLPRB has reviewed the matter and decided to call an additional number of candidates for written exam in the ratio 1:5 as applicable in all categories of posts where eligible candidates are available," it added. The SLPRB said that a new merit list with more candidates to meet the 1:5 ratio will be declared shortly.
The first advertisement for the posts had appeared on April 25, 2018, with addendum on December 19, 2019, and advertisements again appearing on various dates later also. The SLPRB on January 19 this year issued a notice announcing the results of Physical Standard Test (PST) and Physical Efficiency Test (PET) and asked the candidates to check their status on the website and asked the qualified candidates to apply online for the Common Written Test by January 30 on their website.
Following the announcement of the qualifying list, a group of youths who failed to make the cut had staged a protest in front of the police force's headquarters here on January 21, alleging that the system was not transparent. They had also alleged that only two candidates have been allowed against one post for the written test, while the norm is to call five candidates for one post.
DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta had claimed that the entire PST and PET was conducted in a very "clear and transparent" manner. "The total number of candidates may not look like five times due to many reasons like many cleared the cut-off in both armed and unarmed stream, many reserved category applicants got more marks than unreserved (UR) category and got absorbed in UR category and lack of sufficient number of qualifiers in some categories," he clarified.
A total of 1,80,622 candidates had applied for 9,171 posts of various types of constables such as armed, unarmed, home guards, former militants, radio communications and fire and emergency services.
With inputs from PTI.