Students (Representational Photo)
Students at a school in Sanaa (Representational Photo)Reuters

The UPSC row has refused to die down even after the central government announced on Monday that marks for English comprehension skills in the CSAT section of the Civil Services examination will not be included in gradation.

While the Modi government tried to appease protesting Civil Services aspirants by announcing that marks for English sections in the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) will not be counted, it maintained that the CSAT would stay, due to which the aspirants are still not satisfied. 

The Rajya Sabha witnessed another day of uproar over the issue on Tuesday, as Opposition parties continued to demand that the CSAT conducted by the Union Public Service Commission be scrapped completely. The Samajwadi Party has threatened to block the Parliament till the demands are met.

The aspirants had been demanding that the government scrap Paper II of the CSAT, which includes about 8-9 questions relating to English comprehension. They claim that the CSAT will give more advantage to English-speaking applicants over the Hindi-speaking ones and those who write in regional languages.

They want the 200-marks CSAT to be scrapped entirely. "We never asked the BJP-led government to modify the CSAT pattern. Instead, our demand is to abolish this test for the welfare of lakhs of students who had studied in Hindi medium," a UPSC aspirant told the Press Trust of India.

Some of the other demands of the aspirants include that the government correct the benefit to aspirants from a Science background. They also want an improvement in English to Hindi translation.

They also want a postponement of the preliminary examination to be held on 24 August.

The aspirants have been protesting for several weeks to get the CSAT scrapped and to push the government to postpone the preliminary examination, admit cards for which have already been issued. The government, however, has not announced any change in the date of the exam, that has annoyed aspirants even more.

The aspirants have now decided to shift their agitation against CSAT to Jantar Mantar in Delhi. On Tuesday, they were protesting outside Human resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani's residence.