Bhubaneswar, May 29: The Odisha Cabinet on Wednesday approved several key proposals including the enhancement of upper age limit for entry into the state government services.

The Cabinet during a meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Minister of Mohan Charan Majhi here on Wednesday has cleared the proposal to raise the upper age limit from 32 to 42 years for joining government jobs.

The upper age limit for entry into government service is governed under the Odisha Civil Service (Fixation of Upper Age Limit) Rules, 1989. According to Rule 2 of the mentioned rules, the maximum age limit for entering Government Service is 32 years.

“In the meanwhile, numerous representations have been received from the different quarters for enhancement of the upper age limit so as to enable the overaged aspirants to participate in the upcoming recruitment process. In order to provide ample opportunity to over-aged aspirants to participate in different recruitment examinations, Government after careful consideration, has decided to enhance the upper age limit from 32 to 42 years,” reads the official statement issued on Wednesday.

However, the government also clarified that the revised upper age limit will not be applicable where a higher upper age limit has been prescribed for any such service or post.

Similarly, it will not be applicable where the upper age limit has been specifically prescribed for uniform services like Police, Fire Services, Forest, Excise services etc. and where Physical Efficiency Test has been prescribed in the recruitment rules.

The state government has also informed that the above upper age limit will be relaxed further for candidates belonging to ST, SC, SEBC, Women, Ex-Servicemen and PwDs categories.

In another significant decision, the Odisha Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Odisha Artificial Intelligence Policy (2025), aiming to make the state a leading hub for Al-led public innovation, Al startups, and export-ready Al solutions.

The state government in a statement stated that the approval of the AI policy by Odisha Cabinet marks a significant milestone in the state's journey towards harnessing the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (Al) to improve governance, stimulate innovation, enhance data-driven policy decision-making and enable inclusive socio-economic development.

The is part of Odisha's broader digital transformation agenda and aims to embed Al across sectors by promoting responsible, secure, and scalable adoption of Al technologies.

The policy presents a roadmap based on four key pillars: AI infrastructure, skills, energy, and regulatory frameworks. The policy will facilitate high-end compute capacity, enable access to large and open datasets, promote industry-academia collaboration, and support sustainable and green AI deployment.

“A key highlight of the Policy is the creation of a dedicated Odisha Al Mission, which will serve as the apex institutional mechanism to implement Al initiatives across departments, facilitate use case development, coordinate pilot projects, and provide support to public agencies, startups, and academic institutions. The Mission will have a two-tiered governance structure comprising a high-level Al Taskforce and an Al Cell housed at Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC), to drive cross-sectoral Al adoption, facilitate pilot projects, and support use-case acceleration,” reads the official press statement.

(IANS)

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