Calcutta, July 12 :     As yet another pointer to the dismal state of education under the Left, Bengal has recorded the lowest ever contribution to the nation?s pool of IAS officers this year: one. Last year, only two had made the grade, clearing three steps of IAS examinations. As if this was not enough, almost all IAS coaching centres run in the city?s colleges have closed down, thanks to low enrolment, poor performance and paucity of funds. And, this is not the only indication of falling standards. The State Level Eligibility Test conducted by the state College Service Commission to recruit teachers for government colleges this year also showed extremely poor results with less than six percent candidates qualifying. ?Of the nearly three lakh candidates from across the country who appeared for the IAS examinations this time, approximately 475 were selected. Of these, only one is from Bengal,? a senior higher education department official said. About 20,000 candidates appear for the IAS from Bengal every year, he said. Veteran teachers feel that the failure of students from Bengal in national and state level competitive examinations was a glaring example of the sorry state of affairs in the education system. ?Candidates who have been appearing in competitive examinations over the past few years are between 24 and 27 years old. They are often products of the Left Front regime,? a senior teacher of Jadavpur University said. According to higher education department sources, last year the success rate in IAS examinations was marginally high as two candidates had qualified in all the three stages ? preliminary, mains and interview ? of the examinations. The success rate in the State Level Eligibility Test last year was a little above 10 per cent. In 1994-95, the government, realising that there were not enough IAS qualifiers from Bengal, encouraged some colleges to set up centres to coach IAS examinees. Soon after, at least six colleges opened such centres. But four of the six colleges offering IAS coaching have stopped admitting students. While Presidency College and the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management still run the centres, Ashutosh College, Basanti Devi College, Maulana Azad College and Dinabandhu Andrews College do not run these centres any longer. ?It is very unfortunate we had to shut down our IAS coaching centre last year,? Amritava Banerjee, principal, Ashutosh College, said. According to him, there were very few enrollments. Only three candidates approached the college for coaching last year. ?It was not financially feasible to run the centre with so few students as we do not get any financial assistance from the government. It was a sad experience for us,? Banerjee added. The government provides full financial support only to Presidency College to run its centre. The director of the Presidency College coaching centre, Amal Mukhopadhyay, attributed the poor success rate to the high standard of examinations. According to Mukhopadhyay, another factor cutting the success rate down was the craze to grab jobs immediately. In most cases, students join the centres after graduation or post graduation. Many leave as soon as they find a suitable job, Mukhopadhyay said. This year, 60 students enrolled in the Presidency College centre. Of them 35 appeared. Three of them qualified in the preliminary examinations and only one of them has been finally selected.