More than 2.15 lakh candidates will appear for the Group-1 screening test to be conducted by the Andhra Pradesh Public Service Commission (APPSC) on Sunday. The exam is being held to fill 196 Group-1 posts in various government departments. The exam is scheduled to be held from 10.30 am to 1.00 pm at over 500 centres across the state. The screening test will be for 150 marks. The paper will have 150 objective type questions in both English and Telugu.
APPSC has already dispatched hall tickets to all eligible candidates. There were reports from districts that some candidates did not receive their hall tickets till Saturday. “If any candidate has not received the hall ticket so far, he or she can directly download it from the APPSC website,” said the APPSC chairman, Mr Y. Venkatrami Reddy. “We have made arrangements at all district collectorates to issue duplicate hall tickets. We have instructed officials in exam centres to allow candidates without hall tickets, if they produce the receipt issued while buying the application,” he added.
Based on the marks, candidates will be shortlisted at a 1:50 ratio for the main examination. This means 9,800 candidates will be writing the mains. With the notification for Group-1 recruitment issued after a gap four years, the government has extended the maximum age limit of candidates from 34 to 38 to enable more persons to appear for the exam. This resulted in as many as 2,15,255 candidates applying for just 196 vacancies. Though the results of screening test would be announced within a month, the exact schedule of the mains exam is yet to be prepared.