Civil Services exam workshop in two colleges in city held

Kolkata: The Satyendranath Tagore Civil Services Study Centre and state Higher Education department organised UPSC Civil Services Exam Workshop in two colleges —Scottish Church College and St. Xavi-er’s College — where 500 students and 740 students from different colleges of the city participated respectively on Saturday.

Around 14 colleges had come for the workshop at Scottish Church College and 19 had come to attend the same at St. Xavier’s College. Both Centres’ Chairman Surajit Kar Purkayastha, IPS (Retd.) and Principal Secretary of state Education Department Manish Jain, IAS were happy to see the response from the participants of the workshop on their interest in pursuing civil services. “We will also hold it at other places across Bengal. We saw very good participation in the Scottish Church. By clubbing a few colleges, we will have similar workshops at the district level,” Chairman Purkayastha said.

“There has been an overwhelming response for this workshop,” Manish Jain said.

The workshop included speeches by dignitaries, as well as IAS and IPS officers, present there. These officers in their speeches shared insights into their own preparations back in time and the choices they made which helped them succeed and crack the examination which has a tough competition consider-ing the number of aspirants across India and the number of seats available.

The Additional Director General (ADG), Training, Damayanti Sen, IPS, and Secretary of state Transport department Saumitra Mohan, IAS, amongst other officials were present at the workshop and shared their insights into the examination.

“In Bengal, we used to have a huge participation of civil services at one point in time. Very few institu-tions like St. Xaviers and Presidency, there were several aspirants who used to appear and be successful in UPSC. But these days, the numbers have come down. We are trying to rebuild the position of Bengal in the national perspective as far as the national governance is concerned,” Purkayastha said.

According to him, most of the students from Bengal make career choices based on what is happening or what happened to their elder sibling but do not make a choice based on information.

“When you make the choice of preparing for Civil Services, you should make an informed choice,” he said.

To help the students decide and disseminate information on the UPSC examination, this workshop was conducted.