UPSC row: Naidu appeals to all political parties to not distract students

New Delhi: The government Thursday appealed to all political parties to allow the UPSC entrance examination to take place as scheduled on 24 August and assured that the matter of permitting all regional languages would be looked into. Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said: “My appeal is that the exam is on Aug 24 and students are preparing. Let us not deviate them and let the exam be over. I assure you that I will take everybody (into consultation). We will address the issue in future. [caption id=“attachment_1654343” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Venkaiah Naidu. PTI[/caption] Though the changes in the UPSC examination format were made earlier, the matter has been raised by students in 2014, Naidu pointed out. “Changes cannot be made overnight. I myself have taken the initiative over inclusion of different languages. This is an issue which needs to be debated by everybody, including the UPSC,” he said in the Lok Sabha. Students have been protesting for the past two weeks, demanding that the government scrap the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) which they term as being “discriminatory” against those who are from Hindi background. “This matter was raised earlier. The minister (Jitendra Singh) has already made a statement. There are still some apprehensions in the minds of some of the members and also some divergent viewpoints,” he said. In an attempt to put an end to the row related to the CSAT format, the government announced Monday that the marks for English comprehension will not be counted in the final merit list. The issue was raised during Zero Hour by AIADMK member M. Thambidurai, who demanded that apart from Hindi, other regional languages like Tamil should also be included in the UPSC entrance exam. PTI