On February 16, as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi prepared to enter Uttar Pradesh by road, from Kaimur district in Bihar, 21-year-old Avinash Singh, from Vaishali district in Bihar, was on the train to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction in U.P.’s Chandauli. While both journeys were taken in the hope of change, Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, covering 15 States, had the privilege of choice; Singh’s had the compulsion of poverty.
Singh was headed to Lucknow to take the written part of the entrance examination for recruitment to the Uttar Pradesh police’s junior-most position of constable. The exam for 60,244 posts was held between February 16 and 18 in 2,385 centres across all 75 districts of the State. The jobs, for women and men between 18 and 25 years, were advertised in December 2023. Registrations from December 27, 2023 to January 16, 2024 led to 48.17 lakh aspirants submitting forms.
Of these, roughly 2.5 lakh candidates were from Bihar, about 43 lakh hailed from U.P., 98,400 were from Madhya Pradesh, 74,769 from Haryana, 97,277 from Rajasthan, 42,259 from Delhi, and 3,404 from Punjab. Eventually, 5.03 lakh did not take the exam. U.P. Police is among the largest police forces in the world, with more than 2.25 lakh employees working at maintaining law and order in India’s most populous State, which is home to more than 24 crore people.