Congress Demand and Aitchison Committee

The Indian National Congress raised the demand, after it was set up in 1885, for

● lowering of age limit for recruitment, and

● holding the examination simultaneously in India and Britain.

The Aitchison Committee on Public Services (1886), set up by Dufferin, recommended—

● dropping of the terms ‘covenanted’ and ‘uncovenanted’;

● classification of the civil service into Imperial Indian Civil Service (examination in England), Provincial Civil Service (examination in India) and Subordinate Civil Service (examination in India); and,

● raising the age limit to 23.

In 1893, the House of Commons in England passed a resolution supporting holding of simultaneous examination in India and England; but the resolution was never implemented. Kimberley, the secretary of state, said, “It is indispensable that an adequate number of members of civil service shall always be Europeans.”