Hyderabad, Feb 9 (IANS): Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Friday announced that the Group I exam will be conducted soon after raising the upper age limit from 44 to 46 years.

He made the announcement in the Assembly while replying to debate on the motion of thanks for the governor’s address.

The announcement meets a long pending demand of the job aspirants who were now overage as the state had not filled Group I posts for the last six years.

The Group I exam was also cancelled twice in 2022 and 2023 due to question paper leak which rocked the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) last year.

In 2022, the Telangana High Court had asked the state government to consider raising the upper age limit from 44 to 49 to make more aspirants eligible to appear for the Group I exam.

Revanth Reddy told the Assembly that revamping of the TSPSC was delayed due to certain rules.

Taking a dig at his predecessor K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his family members, he said four persons who recently lost their jobs were talking about two lakh jobs.

Taunting the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leaders, the Chief Minister said the new government is not like those who sold question papers in xerox centres and those who sold jobs by appointing their relatives in government departments.

Stating that youth have long been waiting for police jobs, he said 15,000 posts in the P:olice department will be filled. He assured that vacancies in universities will be filled.

Two days ago, the government had sanctioned 60 posts under Group I.

These posts will be filled along with the posts notified by the TSPSC earlier. In April 2022, the TSPSC had issued a notification to fill 503 posts in 18 departments.

Prelims exams were conducted in October 2022. More than 2.87 lakh candidates had appeared in the exam. However, after leakage of question papers of some exams conducted by the TSPSC and thorough investigation, the then BRS government cancelled the exams in March 2023.

Group I Prelims were conducted again on June 11, 2023 but the High Court cancelled the same citing procedural lapses by the TSPSC.

The Congress, which promised to fill two lakh vacancies within a year, revamped the TSPSC after coming to power. It recently appointed former Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy as its Chairman.