New Delhi, Sept. 21: The Manmohan Singh government is studying a proposal to reduce the age ceiling for the civil services examination by four years to 26 and restrict the number of attempts to three to bring down the age profile of aspirants.

The Centre had raised the age limit by two years in 1999 when the retirement age was pushed up from 58 to 60. Realisation soon dawned that the move did not augur well for the bureaucracy, but no one was willing to take the bull by its horns and reverse the decision.

That was till Singh walked into the Prime Minister?s Office, determined to reform the bureaucracy that he had watched closely during his previous stints in government.

The fact that three committees on various aspects of administrative reforms had over the last three years advocated reducing the maximum age seems to have helped make up his mind.

The first was the Y.K. Alagh committee set up in 2000. It made a strong case for pushing the age criterion down to 26 years, arguing that the present limit not only restricted the scope to change the mindset of successful candidates but also raised the economic cost for candidates from poor families.

Last year?s Surinder Nath committee, tasked to appraise the performance of serving bureaucrats, too, commented adversely on the higher entry age in the civil services. It asked the government to identify younger candidates ?with the desired qualities of heart and mind? for the job.

The issue surfaced again before the P.K. Hota committee, which went a step ahead to urge the Centre to reduce the age of entry to 21-24 years for general candidates, as was the case for about 20 years after Independence. It argued that there was an ?undeniable connection? between the age of entry and the values one brings into the service.

Officials said the proposal for post-school recruitment to the civil services, which will be put before the proposed Second Administrative Reforms Commission, was grounded in the desire to lower the qualifying age for civil services aspirants.

The Centre has noted another distortion linked to the higher age levels. Many candidates with professional degrees get selected, resulting in a ?two-fold waste of national and private resources?.

Also, the higher age ceiling has allowed candidates, often married with children, already working in the government in subordinate positions to be selected. ?It is very difficult to change their mental orientation,? said a concept note prepared by the cabinet secretariat and the PMO on recruitment and training systems.

It was echoing the Hota committee report that spoke of the futility of expecting a person ?in his thirties, already married and well into domesticity and coming with an accumulated mental baggage, to learn the basics of ethical behaviour? during the post-recruitment training course.