Thiruvananthapuram: Keralites’ craze for a ‘safe’ government job will be on display on Saturday, when more than 600,000 turn up for an examination to select clerks for the Kerala State Beverages Corporation (KSBC), which enjoys a monopoly in retail liquor sales.
There is no clarity on the number of posts available, although local media reported that roughly 200 posts may be vacant.
Candidates shortlisted through this examination may also be recruited for other posts that need filing in the next three years.
The test is also the biggest for the state public service commission in terms of candidates attending. As many as 636,263 candidates are expected to turn up for the test on Saturday for the junior level post — lower division clerk — in KSBC.
Nearly 120,000 of them are expected to appear for the examination in Thiruvananthapuram district, the state capital.
Nearly 2,800 examination centres have been readied across more than 2,600 schools and colleges across the state for the candidates taking the examination.
This is also estimated to be the highest number of examination centres used for any examination conducted for a state government undertaking’s recruitment.
Before this, the largest number of candidates to have appeared for an examination in the state on a single day was when nearly 550,000 applied for a test for the post of assistant in universities.
The examination begins at 2pm on Saturday, and the halls will be closed half an hour before that. The road and water transport departments are proposing to run special services on Saturday to facilitate travel for the exam candidates.
The qualifying standard to take the examination is a pass in Class X. Over the past few years, liberal awarding of marks has meant almost all candidates who take the Class X examination secure a pass. This in turn has made hundreds of thousands of candidates eligible to take examinations for lower level jobs advertised by the state public service commission.
Incidentally, the boom in applicants for a post in the state-run liquor monopoly happens at a time when the state government has restricted liquor sales to only five-star hotels, a decision taken by the previous United Democratic Front government.
The tourism industry is crying foul over that move, pointing out that the Kerala tourism sector has lost out significantly owing to the restrictive liquor policy. Industry players say that a large number of meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions events are migrating to other states or to Sri Lanka because of Kerala’s tough rules on liquor consumption.
