The origin of the Public Service Commission in India is found in the First
Dispatch of the Government of India on the Indian Constitutional Reforms on
the 5th March, 1919 which referred to the need for setting up some permanent office charged with the regulation of service matters. This concept of a body intended to be charged primarily with the regulation of service matters, found a somewhat more practical shape in the Government of India Act, 1919.
Section 96(C) of the Act provided for the establishment in India of a Public
Service Commission which should “discharge, in regard to recruitment and
control of the Public Services in India, such functions as may be assigned
thereto by rules made by the Secretary of State in Council”.
After passing of the Government of India Act, 1919, in spite of a prolonged
correspondence among various levels on the functions and machinery of the
body to be set up, no decision was taken on setting up of the body. The
subject was then referred to the Royal Commission on the Superior Civil
Services in India (also known as Lee Commission). The Lee Commission, in
their report in the year 1924, recommended that the statutory Public Service
Commission contemplated by the Government of India Act, 1919 should be
established without delay.
Subsequent to the provisions of Section 96(C) of the Government of India Act,
1919 and the strong recommendations made by the Lee Commission in 1924 for the
early establishment of a Public Service Commission, it was on October 1, 1926
that the Public Service Commission was set up in India for the first time. It
consisted of four Members in addition to the Chairman. Sir Ross Barker, a
member of the Home Civil Service of the United Kingdom was the first Chairman of the Commission.