The interviews for recruitment in Bihar Vikas Mission will begin on May 26.
Candidates who applied for positions of programme analysts, finance associates and communications associates have been asked to appear in-person before the selection committee. The calls have been made on the basis of a merit list that the selection committee prepared.
"The interview begins on May 26 for three positions," cabinet secretariat department principal secretary Brajesh Mehrotra, also the member-secretary at Bihar Vikas Mission told The Telegraph. "We are still looking into the applications for four other positions (management, technical and research associates and project lead). The interviews for these positions will start after we are done recruiting for the three posts."
The three positions make for 30 of the 100 positions that were advertised for by Bihar Vikas Mission this February. The advertisement attracted around 3,700 applicants from institutions such as Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale University, Indian Institutes of Management and Indian Institutes of Technology.
However, a total of 2,345 applications were rejected on the grounds of not being in the prescribed format, which amounts to 90 per cent of rejected applications. In some of them, candidates had not mentioned their date of birth, some applicants did not fit the age criteria, some did not have the necessary professional experience or educational qualifications. Bihar Vikas Mission has asked the rejected applicants to email their objections by May 23 to further scrutiny.
"We have already received a few objections and are examining them," a Bihar Vikas Mission official said. "If their objections are found to be valid, we will call them for the interview provided they make it to the merit list."
The selection committee comprises Mehrotra, finance department principal secretary Ravi Mittal, senior bureaucrats and two members from Chandragupt Institute of Management-Patna. It will interview applicants in the ratio of 1:2 (two candidates for one post). The calls will be made according to the merit list that the committee has prepared based on the application forms. The recruitment will take place on the basis of contracts, which will be for a period of 11 months and might be extended for another 11 months if necessary.
Bihar Vikas Mission is the brainchild of chief minister Nitish Kumar's poll strategist Prashant Kishor and has been established under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 by the state government. It is to continue the agenda of sustained development in Bihar with the help of professional experience.
It is also Bihar Vikas Mission's job to look into the seven resolves Nitish announced in the run-up to last year's Assembly elections. The resolves are strengthening the youth, 35 per cent reservation for women in government jobs, electricity and piped water supply in every household, pucca lanes and drains in all villages and towns, toilets in every house and increased opportunities with better higher education.
