Staff Selection Commission

The Staff Selection Commission, or SSC, is an attached office of the Department of Personnel and Training that recruits staff to Group B (non-gazetted) and Group C posts across central government ministries, departments, and their subordinate offices. It was set up in 1975, is headquartered in New Delhi, and conducts a set of all-India examinations, chief among them the SSC Combined Graduate Level , which fills posts from the Income Tax Inspector to the Tax Assistant.

This page sets out the Commission: what it recruits and where its remit ends, how it was constituted, its offices, the examinations it conducts and the posts each fills, and the recruitment process. For the pay of the posts it fills, see the SSC CGL salary page and the salary by pay level chart.

What the Commission does

The Staff Selection Commission is the recruiting agency for the subordinate and ministerial layer of the central government. It fills Group B non-gazetted and Group C posts in the ministries and departments and their attached and subordinate offices, from the Inspector grades in the revenue departments down to the clerical and multi-tasking posts.

Its remit is defined as much by what it does not do. The gazetted Group A services, the officer cadres such as the IAS, the IPS, and the Indian Revenue Service , are recruited by the Union Public Service Commission through the Civil Services Examination, not by the SSC. The railways recruit through their own Railway Recruitment Boards. So the SSC sits between them: below the Group A officer services that go through the UPSC, and separate from the railway and banking streams, holding the graduate and school-level recruitment for the central secretariat and the departments. A few posts it fills, such as certain Assistant Section Officer and Sub-Inspector posts, are Group B gazetted at entry, so its work is best described as primarily, though not only, Group B non-gazetted and Group C.

How it was set up

The Staff Selection Commission rests on executive authority, not on an Act of Parliament, which is the key difference between it and the UPSC.

The Estimates Committee of Parliament recommended a single agency to recruit the lower-category posts, and the government acted on it by a resolution constituting the Subordinate Services Commission on 4 November 1975. The body was redesignated the Staff Selection Commission on 26 September 1977, and a revised constitution and functions took effect in 1999. Because it was created by a government resolution and functions under the Department of Personnel and Training , it is neither a constitutional body like the UPSC nor a statutory body created by an Act. The distinction matters for how the Commission is governed, though not for the candidate, whose examination and selection run the same either way.

Structure and offices

The Commission has its headquarters in New Delhi and a network of field offices that conduct the examinations across the country. There are nine field offices, seven regional and two sub-regional, each covering a group of states.

A candidate applies to the Commission centrally and sits the examination at a centre under the regional office for the chosen state, and the regional office handles the local conduct of the exam and the document verification.

The examinations

The Staff Selection Commission conducts several examinations, each for a band of posts and a level of qualification, and all are now computer-based tests.

The SSC Combined Graduate Level is the flagship, the graduate-level examination that fills the higher-paid posts from Level 4 to Level 8, and it draws the largest number of aspirants. The central government jobs hub sets the SSC exams alongside the UPSC and railway routes.

The recruitment process

The examinations follow a common shape. A candidate applies online, sits a computer-based test in one or more stages, and, on clearing the cut-off, goes through document verification before a post is allotted.

The higher exams have more than one stage. The SSC CGL , for instance, is a two-tier examination: a qualifying Tier I that screens candidates and a merit-deciding Tier II that fixes the rank and, with it, the post. The final allotment follows the merit rank, the reserved-category status, and the preference order the candidate gives over the posts, so the same rank can lead to different posts in different years depending on the vacancies. The Commission notifies a tentative vacancy figure with each examination and firms it up as the departments confirm their indents.

Reservation and relaxations

The examinations apply the central reservation and relaxation rules, which widen who can compete for a post beyond the open cut-off.

Vacancies are reserved for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, the Other Backward Classes, the Economically Weaker Sections, and persons with benchmark disabilities, in the proportions the government sets, and ex-servicemen have their own reservation in the posts open to them. The upper age of each post’s band is relaxed on top: by three years for the Other Backward Classes, five for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, and the prescribed relaxations for persons with disabilities and for ex-servicemen. So a post with a stated age band of 18 to 30 is open past 30 for a reserved-category candidate, and the qualifying marks and the examination fee are eased in the same way. The rules are the standard central-government ones, applied uniformly across the SSC exams rather than set afresh for each.

Pay of the posts

The posts the Commission fills are paid on the standard central-government pattern, fixed by the pay matrix level of the post: the entry basic, then dearness allowance at 60 per cent, house rent allowance by city, and transport allowance , less the deductions for pension, health scheme, and income tax. A Level 7 Income Tax Inspector draws an in-hand of about Rs. 83,000 in an X-class city, a Level 4 Tax Assistant about Rs. 50,000. The SSC CGL salary page compares the posts by level, and the 7th CPC salary calculator computes the take-home for a chosen level and city.

See also

• SSC CGL
• SSC CGL salary
• Income Tax Inspector salary
• Salary by pay level
• Salary by pay level calculator
• 7th CPC salary calculator
• Central government jobs
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Central Board of Direct Taxes
• Income Tax Officer
• Indian Revenue Service
• Central Armed Police Forces
• Railway employees
• Pay matrix
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• Take-home salary of central government employees
• Dearness allowance
• House rent allowance
• Transport allowance
• National Pension System
• Central government employees in India

External references

• Staff Selection Commission
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Union Public Service Commission
• Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions