Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Oct 30: Aspirants of the J&K Combined Competitive Examination (JKCCE) today urged the Government to restore the five-year age relaxation for open merit candidates in the upcoming JKAS 2025 examination, raising the upper age limit from 32 to 37 years.
In a joint representation, the aspirants said that candidates from the open merit category had been availing a five-year age relaxation since 2010, which was also extended during the JKAS 2018 and 2021 examinations.
However, since the 2022 notification, aspirants said, the relaxation has been withdrawn, restricting the upper age limit for open merit candidates to 32 years.
They argued that the change has excluded a large number of deserving and hardworking aspirants from participating in the exam.
Citing multiple reasons, the aspirants said frequent delays in exam cycles, limited vacancies, and enhanced reservation quotas have further reduced opportunities for open merit candidates.
They also pointed out that several Indian states – including Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Odisha – have fixed the upper age limit for general category candidates between 37 and 44 years, with Odisha recently increasing it from 32 to 42.
The aspirants further said that J&K has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and that relaxing the age limit would allow a broader section of educated youth to compete in the civil services examination.
They also recalled that JK-domiciled candidates born between 1980 and 1989 were earlier given a five-year relaxation in central examinations to compensate for disruption during the militancy years – a policy that was discontinued in 2019.
Terming JKAS the only major examination in the Union Territory with the lowest upper age limit, the aspirants appealed to the Government to continue the earlier convention of providing a five-year age relaxation for open merit candidates in JKAS 2025.
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