Age Bias in UPSC Interviews: A Former Panelist Shares an Incident

[Suresh]

How Bias Can Affect Your UPSC Interview Scores: A Former Panelist Shares an Incident Where a Candidate Got Low Marks Just Because He Was Around 27-28 Years Old

A former UPSC interview panelist, Vinay Nagia, was interviewing a candidate who was already a PCS officer, around 27 years old, and was really confident and performing great in the interview. The candidate answered questions clearly and deserved good marks, but when it was time to give marks, the chairman of the board refused to give him good marks. Nagia asked him, if the candidate did so well, why not give him good marks. At first, the chairman did not answer, but after being asked several times, he finally said something that shows a pretty disturbing mindset. He said the candidate was already a bit old, and at best he would become a Joint Secretary in the Government of India or a Secretary in a state government. According to him, such officers might become tools in the hands of political parties. Because of this assumption about the candidate's future, he did not want to give him high marks.

[Anita]

 I am turning 31 in July

[Shobha]

This logic is totally flawed, a person who can become cabinet secretary is not immune to becoming a political tool or anything

[Satish]

The sir is not saying anything wrong, kudos to him for sharing this openly, usually panelists do not disclose such things even in IGP as it will discourage those who are 27-28 or older, but this is the reality, you can even see that many officers above the age of 28 in DANICS, DANIPS, and other Group A allied services have received low interview scores, the information is publicly available, you can analyze it

[Ritu]

What an idiot

[Gaurav]

I turned 25 this year, I guess I am done for

[Anupama]

What is the big deal about becoming cabinet secretary, there is so much work to be done below him, 30 years of service from a good candidate is very valuable, 30 years is a lot, a lot can happen in 30 years

[Tushar]

This is ridiculous, legal action should be taken against people like this, who are they to decide this, UPSC already allows candidates till the age of 32 to write exams and he is not respecting that, it is high time to call out these people

[Nakul]

This is like some kind of age based exclusion, like what we see in the movies

[Aman]

UPSC is the only field where you seem to get dumber with age, rather than wiser

[Sangeeta]

I do not buy this, most candidates are between 25 to 30 years old, so this is not the reason, I think it is because he was already in PCS