Rishabh Tripathi (name changed to protect privacy), 27, is worried. He lives in an 80-square-foot rented room in a double-storey house in Ayodhya town, its walls chipped, the floor cracked, the roof leaking. He is contemplating his next steps.
Tripathi, an ambitious State-level 10m air pistol shooter, feels his dreams are dying a slow death. He has just been on the website of the Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Service Selection Commission (UPSSSC), and is disappointed. Again.
“Every day I check the website twice. It has been two months now. The final results of the Village Panchayat Officer (VPO, or Gram Panchayat Adhikari) post have still not been posted. I have been trying for a government job, but the prolonged delay in conducting the examination is adversely impacting my life, my dreams,” says a frustrated Tripathi.
The son of a street vendor, who owns less than an acre of farmland, Tripathi has two dreams: to help the family in his elder sister’s marriage and to take a loan for sports equipment and academy fees. “I dream of representing India in the 2028 Olympics. If the final result of the VPO is declared, I can take the loan. Shooting is an expensive sport; my family can’t afford it,” he says. Now, he makes ends meet by tutoring children in Ayodhya, managing to earn ₹4,000 a month.
Tripathi is among millions of young government job aspirants in Uttar Pradesh, most of who hope for the stability of an income and upward social mobility.
Many have a similar grievance: that the recruitment commission entrusted to conduct the examinations routinely delays the process, wasting young aspirants’ prime years. They allege irregularities in the process. In the past, there have been Preliminary Eligibility Test (PET) paper leaks, besides those of other exams.
Waiting for Godot
The VPO is a Group C post, an administrative role to facilitate the implementation of government schemes, among other work.
The UPSSSC is authorised to recruit group C and D posts whenever the State Government puts out a notification for hiring. On May 16, 2023, up to 1,468 VPO posts were notified. Roughly 40 times the number of candidates were shortlisted, based on their PET scores.
The PET is a State-level qualifying exam managed by the UPSSSC. It features a 100-question, 100-mark, two-hour written test, with one-fourth negative marking.
Tripathi has a BSc degree from Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University. He is upset that the commission has also not processed the results of a Junior Assistant post, another job he had applied for.
“I sat for the exam in June last year, the results were declared in October. The typing test was done in November and December, and the results were declared in February this year,” he says, adding that even his documents were verified in May.
“But the final result is pending. This was for a job notified on August 4, 2023. These delays are frustrating, not just for me but also for other people my age. Our youth is getting wasted,” Tripathi adds.
A deep-rooted crisis
Pankaj Pandey, convener of the Sanyukt Pratiyogi Chhatra Hunkar Manch, a Prayagraj-based outfit of competitive exam aspirants that holds its meetings in a field on the banks of the Ganga. For the last two months, he has been demanding a fair investigation into alleged irregularities in the Lekhpal examination conducted by the UPSSSC.
“There are multiple videos circulating on social media platforms of organised cheating in the Lekhpal Mains examination [conducted on May 21 across 861 centres in 44 districts]. We demanded that the Uttar Pradesh government appoint a high-level Special Investigation Team to probe the allegations, but this has not been accepted,” says Pandey, a government job aspirant.
The government says that the allegations of paper leak are false. According to an official statement, the exam was “fair, uninterrupted and peaceful”, conducted “with full transparency”. Once the government got the news of a paper leak, “competent authorities immediately verified it, and the information was found to be completely misleading and false”.
A government job aspirant studying in her room in Uttar Pradesh.
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement
There were 7,994 posts, for which 3,01,756 sat for the exam, which means 37.75 people appeared for each post.
The aspirants are not satisfied. “We organised a protest march in Prayagraj, and held demonstrations for days outside the UPSSSC office. We submitted petitions to all concerned stakeholders,” says Deepak Patel, a 24-year-old from Sherpur in Ghazipur district. He adds that most recruitment takes years to complete the process. “Comprehensive reforms in recruitment boards are the need of the hour to assuage the anxiety of aspirants,” he says.
A graduate in Hindi Literature, Patel’s parents work as agricultural labourers in their village and do not possess any ancestral land. “When they manage to find work, they earn ₹400. I wish to improve their circumstances. I studied hard for the Lekhpal exam, but the news of irregularities is making me anxious. For generations, my family lived in a state of inferiority; the government examination represents a chance for people like us to transform our lives,” he says.
Millions like him are in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh’s coaching hub. They feel let down by the system, he says.
Patel adds that on June 22, he joined the protest march of the Sanyukt Pratiyogi Chhatra Hunkar Manch, in support of the Jantar Mantar protests in New Delhi over NEET irregularities.
“We face similar problems, but no one is listening to us, perhaps because we are not in the national capital and are poor,” adds Patel.
In their representation to the authorities, the Sanyukt Pratiyogi Chhatra Hunkar Manch called for the timely completion of pending and irregular recruitments. It also sought a robust system for Trained Graduate Teacher (TGT) and Post Graduate Teacher (PGT) recruitment, along with time-bound primary and junior teacher recruitment. The group also demanded transparency in recruitment commissions, including the UPPSC, regular dialogue with stakeholders, and comprehensive administrative reforms.
The struggle for a job
Resentment is not limited to the UPSSSC. The Uttar Pradesh Education Service Selection Commission (UPESSC), established in 2023, after the dissolution of the U.P. Higher Education Service Commission and the U.P. Secondary Education Service Selection Board, faces similar questions.
The Board is entrusted with the responsibility of teacher selection for various schools and colleges, some government-aided, some minority-funded. They too are facing questions over postponement of various recruitment and eligibility tests. The notification for TGT posts came in 2022, under the previous commission, and the exam was conducted in June, 2026.
Roughly 8.6 lakh aspirants filled the TGT form for 3,539 seats in government schools.
Anurag Singh, an aspirant based in Prayagraj, says a notification for the examination was released in early 2022, with the exam to be held that year. The exam didn’t take place. The dates were fixed for April 2025, after aspirants protested the delay. This too kept getting postponed, until it was held in May this year. Results were declared on July 28. “It took four years to complete the process, with the dates getting pushed five times,” says Anurag.
Prabhat Verma, who works as a teacher in a coaching centre for UPSSSC exams, says those who appear for the exams are usually from smaller cities or villages. They have struggled through school education with a lack of both quality teaching and infrastructure.
The most recent paper leak was in January, when the Uttar Pradesh government cancelled the Assistant Professor examination conducted in April 2025 after a paper leak and illegal extortion racket came to light.
Allegations of a government that doesn’t care
Rajat Singh, who leads the DELED Morcha, a group of Diploma in Elementary Education holders (D.El.Ed), says that vacancies for primary-level teachers haven’t been advertised for over five years. “Five years is a long time,” he says.
“Hamare jaise D.El.Ed degree vale khud ko mara hua samajh rahe hai (Those like me with a D.El.Ed degree feel dead),” says Rajat. The DELED Morcha has approached the government to advertise for posts, but Rajat says the government has not responded: “They are silent. What is the need for such a degree if there are no appointments. Why give aspirants hope?” D.El.Ed is a two-year, full-time certificate course to train students to teach at levels of Classes 1 to 8.
Amid the questions, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said at an event in May that the government has created a record by providing over 9 lakh jobs since 2017.
He alleged that recruitment was stalled by corruption before his tenure. “We have recruited over 2.20 lakh police personnel. In 2025 alone, 60,242 candidates were selected and have completed training within Uttar Pradesh,” he said. Critics allege that the high number of appointments in the police force reflects a broader agenda in Uttar Pradesh, which is lax with teacher hiring but prompt with police hiring.
“The government, under the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), is working on the doctrine of a hard State through a heavy-handed police force and the repression of dissent, as evident from the bulldozer-centric approach in law and order,” said Shahnawaz Alam, national secretary, Congress. He says they need a police force that will obey orders. “Such governments are against logic, fair justice, accountability, and reasoning which are key markers of a civilised society.” He says the irregular recruitment system must be understood against this background.
Anil Yadav, a senior Uttar Pradesh Congress leader, demanded a white paper on time taken to complete the recruitment examination process under UPSSSC, UPESSC, and other recruitment boards in Uttar Pradesh. “The government must answer over 5 million young people,” he says.
In December 2025, when Prashant Kumar took charge as chairperson of the UPESSC he said, “My top priority is to ensure that the selection process is completely transparent and merit-based.”
mayank.kumar@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew and Amarjot Kaur
