3 min readPatnaMay 16, 2026 04:33 PM IST
In an effort to ensure a level playing field for candidates, the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) has directed its interview boards not to ask them their name, category, region or place of education.
The boards have also been asked not to take into account any regional accents or manner of speaking displayed by the candidates in their assessment.
Officials said the reforms were successfully tried out during the interviews held in April of 5,504 candidates for about 2,100 posts following the BPSC’s 70th Combined Competitive Examinations (CCE).
BPSC chairman Ravi Manubhai Parmar told The Indian Express, “It does not matter if a candidate has got his degree from the London School of Economics or a college in a Bihar district; as long as he or she fulfils our criteria, it should be perfectly alright with the board.”
“Our first and foremost attempt is to help the boards get over any bias that can come with revelations of personal details of a candidate, mainly his or her social and educational background,” he said.
Parmar said the initiative was taken after they got feedback from several candidates who came from rural backgrounds. “There can be no discrimination on the grounds of one’s social or educational background. It is called blind assessment methodology,” said Parmar.
An interview board has four members. The boards are constituted on the day of the interview through a lottery system, the BPSC chairman said.
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“We call five board members on the day of the interview and randomly leave one out,” he said.
There are four interview boards, which interview in two shifts. Each board has a BPSC member (the ex officio chairperson of the board), an IAS or IPS officer, a subject expert and an expert from an IIM or IIT.
Each candidate is identified only by a code in front of the interview board. “The final code of a candidate is a combination of two codes. Those who give one of the codes won’t know the candidate’s final combined code. The two-level coding, or recoding, is foolproof,” Parmar said.
The interview is worth 120 marks in the BPSC selection process. The prelims are for 150 marks, which are followed by two general studies papers and an essay paper, all of which are 300 marks each. Ahead of the interview, which is the final part of the process, the members of the interview boards are not told how much each candidate scored in the written tests.
