Govt raises upper age limit for state job entry from 40 to 45 years

Kolkata: The newly sworn-in BJP govt in Bengal, led by chief minister Suvendu Adhikari, raised the upper age limit for entry into state jobs from 40 to 45 years at its first cabinet meeting on Monday. The decision, announced from state secretariat Nabanna, aimed at addressing a decade of "recruitment deadlock" and followed an election guarantee by the party.After the meeting, Adhikari told reporters the five-year relaxation would serve as a lifeline for lakhs of educated aspirants, who crossed the eligibility threshold since 2015 due to the absence of regular recruitment cycles under the previous dispensation. "Lakhs of educated young men and women became ineligible due to stalled processes," chief minister Adhikari said. "This five-year relaxation is our guarantee to those who were deprived of opportunities.""Employment and transparent recruitment are our top priorities," Adhikari said. "During the campaign, Union home minister Amit Shah had promised that the BJP would resolve the deadlock and provide opportunities to deprived candidates. Today, we have fulfilled that guarantee in our first hour."The cabinet meeting was attended by key ministers, including Dilip Ghosh, Agnimitra Paul and Nisith Pramanik.The meeting also signalled a shift towards closer cooperation with the Centre and marked a departure from the state's previous confrontational stance with New Delhi. The cabinet mandated central training programmes for IAS, IPS, and WBCS officers. Adhikari said the "unwritten instructions" of the previous administration to avoid such programmes were scrapped to align West Bengal with national administrative standards. He also assured that all existing social welfare schemes would continue transparently, and the integration of state projects with central schemes was expected to be the primary strategy to manage the financial burden.