JAMMU DEC,06: Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha’s office has pushed back against criticism over the handling of the age-relaxation proposal linked to the JKPSC Combined Competitive Examination (CCE), saying the relevant file was turned around on the very day it reached Lok Bhavan and that no follow-up response was received from the government for four days.
According to a post from the LG’s office, the file landed at Lok Bhavan on December 2 and dealt only with relaxing the upper age limit for aspirants, not with rescheduling the exam itself. It said the file was immediately sent back the same day with a query routed to JKPSC, asking whether it would be logistically possible to hold the December 7 CCE after changing eligibility criteria at such a late stage. The post added that no reply had come back to Lok Bhavan despite the passage of four days and stressed that the original advertisement was issued on August 22, with the exam date formally notified on November 6.
Sinha described social media chatter around the exam as “misleading” and said he “fully sympathised” with young aspirants, but underlined that the administration had to consider the practical feasibility of last-minute changes. His clarification followed Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s appeal to JKPSC earlier in the day to postpone the CCE, citing severe airline disruptions, freezing weather and uncertainty over age relaxation as factors placing candidates under “unprecedented stress”.
Abdullah’s advisor Nasir Aslam Wani reiterated that the elected government supports relaxing the upper age limit and had forwarded the proposal to Lok Bhavan, arguing that the exam should be deferred until the issue is settled. PDP president Mehbooba Mufti and CPI(M) leader M Y Tarigami also weighed in, warning that going ahead with the test while the relaxation decision is pending and many outstation candidates remain stranded by flight cancellations would be unfair, and urging that the examination be rescheduled once the approval process is complete
