Hyderabad: The TRS government and its companies seem to be going in opposite directions on the age limit of job applicants.

While Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has stated that the upper age limit for public recruitments would be raised to 40, companies like the Singareni Collieries have in fact reduced the upper age limit to 30 years.

Before bifurcation, the upper age limit for public recruitment was 34.

It is also unclear if recruitments to be taken up by the TS Public Service Commission (TSPSC) will be according to the new age limit or the old one.

The Telangana Cabinet on Tuesday also decided that 3,650 police constables would be hired to strengthen security. This is in addition to the hundreds of engineer posts in Panchayat Raj department sanctioned earlier. However, no official orders for relaxing the upper age limit from 34 to 40 have been issued till now. Officials say that the file pertaining to the decision was approved by Chief Minister. AP government had relaxed the age limit to 40 years in September 2014 and said that APPSC recruitments will be according to the new rules.

As older candidates are clueless on whether they will be considered for the recruitments companies like Singareni Collieries have already issued notifications for recruitments with upper age limit as just 30. This is contrary to what the government has been promising all along.

“Generally the government order is for direct recruitments carried out by PSC. But they are autonomous public comp-anies and they can relax or tighten age norms but it is against the spirit of the government,” a senior TSPSC official said.