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on/after 01.04.2024 (after the completion of FY 2023-24) but not later than the closing date of the
Online Application Form for Civil Services Examination-2025 i.e. 11th February, 2025.

(3) A candidate will be eligible to get the benefit of the Economically Weaker Section reservation only
in case the candidate meets the criteria issued by the Central Government and is in possession of
requisite Income & Asset Certificate based on income for Financial Year (FY) 2023-2024 and issued
on/after 01.04.2024 (after the completion of FY 2023-24) but not later than the closing date of the
Online Application Form for Civil Services Examination-2025 i.e. 11th February, 2025.

10. Candidates seeking reservation/relaxation benefits available for SC/ST/OBC/EWS/PwBD/Ex-

servicemen must ensure that they are entitled to such reservation/relaxation as per eligibility prescribed in
the Rules/Notice. They should also be in possession of all the requisite certificates in the prescribed format
in support of their claim as stipulated in the Rules/Notice for such benefits by the closing date of the online
application of Civil Services Examination, 2025.

11. The closing date fixed for the receipt of the Online Application Form of Civil Services Examination-
2025 will be treated as the date for determining the OBC status (including that of creamy layer) of the
candidates.

12. Change of Category:

If the category indicated by a candidate in the Registration and Online Application Form for Civil
Services Examination is Unreserved category but the candidate subsequently writes to the Commission to
change the category to a reserved one, such request shall not be entertained by the Commission. Further,
once a candidate has chosen a reserved category, no request shall be entertained for change to other
reserved category viz. SC to ST, ST to SC, OBC to SC/ST or SC/ST to OBC, SC to EWS, EWS to SC, ST to
EWS, EWS to ST, OBC to EWS, EWS to OBC. No Reserved category candidates other than those who
qualified each stage of the Examination on General standard, shall be allowed to change (on their request
or as decided by the Commission/Government based on the documents submitted by them) their category
from reserved to unreserved or claim the vacancies (Service/Cadre) for unreserved category after the
declaration of final result by UPSC. In cases where such candidates do not qualify on General Standard,
their candidature shall be cancelled. Further, no candidate belonging to any sub-category of Persons with
Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD) shall be allowed to change the sub-category of disability.

While the above principle will be followed in general, there may be a few cases where there was a gap
of not more than 3 months between the issuance of a Government Notification enlisting a particular
community in the list of any of the reserved communities and the date of submission of the application by
the candidate. In such cases, the request of change of category from Unreserved to Reserved may be
considered by the Commission on merit.

In case of a candidate becoming a Candidate belonging to Person with Benchmark Disability during
the course of the examination process, the candidate must produce valid document of acquiring a disability
to the extent of 40% or more as defined under the RPwD Act, 2016 to consider drawing the benefits of
reservation as available to the Persons with Benchmark Disability (PwBD) category.

Government strives to have a workforce which reflects gender balance and women candidates are encouraged to apply.
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13. Withdrawal of applications: The cadidates will not be allowed to withdraw their applications after
the submission of the same.

(SATENDER KUMAR GUPTA)

JOINT SECRETARY
UNION PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION

Government strives to have a workforce which reflects gender balance and women candidates are encouraged to apply.
 23

APPENDIX I
SECTION I: PLAN OF EXAMINATION

The Civil Services Examination comprises two successive stages:

(i) Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination (Objective Type) for the selection of candidates for Civil
Services (Main) Examination; and
(ii) Civil Services (Main) Examination (Written and Interview/Personality Test) for the selection of
candidates for the various Services and posts.

2. The Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination will consist of two papers of Objective type (multiple
choice questions) and carry a maximum of 400 marks in the subjects set out in sub-section (A) of Section
II. This examination is meant to serve as a screening test only; the marks obtained in the Civil Services
(Preliminary) Examination by the candidates who are declared qualified for admission to the Civil Services
(Main) Examination will not be counted for determining their final order of merit. The number of candidates
to be admitted to the Civil Services (Main) Examination will be about twelve to thirteen times the total
approximate number of vacancies to be filled in the year through this Examination. Only those candidates
who are declared by the Commission to have qualified in the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination in the
year will be eligible for admission to the Civil Services (Main) Examination of that year provided they are
otherwise eligible for admission to the Civil Services (Main) Examination.

Note I: The Commission will draw a list of candidates to be qualified for Civil Services (Main) Examination
based on the criterion of minimum qualifying marks of 33% in General Studies Paper-II of Civil Services
(Preliminary) Examination and total qualifying marks of General Studies Paper-I of Civil Services
(Preliminary) Examination as may be determined by the Commission.

Note II: There will be negative marking for incorrect answers as detailed below:
(i) There are four alternatives for the answers to every question. For each question for which a wrong
answer has been given by the candidate, one-third (0.33) of the marks assigned to that question will
be deducted as penalty.
(ii) If a candidate gives more than one answer, it will be treated as a wrong answer even if one of the
given answers happen to be correct and there will be same penalty as above for that question.
(iii) If a question is left blank i.e. no answer is given by the candidate, there will be no penalty for that
question.

3. The Civil Services (Main) Examination will consist of a Written Examination and an
Interview/Personality Test. The Written Examination will consist of 9 papers of conventional essay type in
the subjects set out in sub-section (B) of Section-II out of which two papers will be of qualifying in nature.
[Also see Note (ii) under Para-I of Section II-(B)]. Marks obtained for all the compulsory papers (Paper-I to
Paper-VII) and Marks obtained in Interview/Personality Test will be counted for ranking.

4.1 Candidates who obtain such minimum qualifying marks in the written part of the Civil Services (Main)
Examination as may be fixed by the Commission at their discretion, shall be summoned by them for an
Interview/Personality Test, vide sub-section (C) of Section-II. The number of candidates to be summoned
for Interview/Personality Test will be about twice of the number of vacancies to be filled. The
Interview/Personality Test will carry 275 marks (with no minimum qualifying marks).
Government strives to have a workforce which reflects gender balance and women candidates are encouraged to apply.
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4.2 Marks thus obtained by the candidates in the Civil Services (Main) Examination (Written part as well
as Interview/Personality Test) would determine their final ranking. Candidates will be allotted to the various
Services keeping in view their ranks in the examination and the preferences expressed by them for the
various Services and posts.

SECTION II: Scheme and Subjects for the Preliminary and Main Examination

A. PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION:
The Examination shall comprise of two compulsory Papers of 200 marks each.
Note:
(i) Both the question papers will be of the objective type (multiple choice questions) and each will be of
two hours duration.
(ii) The General Studies Paper-II of the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination will be a qualifying paper
with minimum qualifying marks fixed at 33%.
(iii) The question papers will be set both in Hindi and English.
(iv) Details of the syllabi are indicated in Part A of Section III.

B. MAIN EXAMINATION:
The Written Examination will consist of the following papers:—

Qualifying Papers:
Paper-A
(One of the Indian Language to be selected by the candidate from the Languages included in the
Eighth Schedule to the Constitution). 300 Marks
Paper-B
English 300 Marks

Papers to be counted for merit:

Paper-I
Essay 250 Marks
Paper-II
General Studies-I 250 Marks
(Indian Heritage and Culture, History and Geography of the World and Society)
Paper-III
General Studies -II 250 Marks
(Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations)
Paper-IV
General Studies -III 250 Marks
(Technology, Economic Development, Bio-diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management)
Paper-V
General Studies -IV 250 Marks
(Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude)
Paper-VI
Optional Subject - Paper 1 250 Marks
Paper-VII
Government strives to have a workforce which reflects gender balance and women candidates are encouraged to apply.
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Optional Subject - Paper 2 250 Marks

Sub Total (Written test) 1750 Marks
Personality Test 275 Marks
=====================================================================================
Grand Total 2025 Marks

Candidates may choose any one of the optional subjects from amongst the list of subjects given in
para 2 below:—
Note:
(i) The papers on Indian languages and English (Paper A and paper B) will be of Matriculation or equivalent
standard and will be of qualifying nature. The marks obtained in these papers will not be counted for
ranking.
(ii) Evaluation of the papers, namely, 'Essay', 'General Studies' and Optional Subject of all the candidates
would be done simultaneously along with evaluation of their qualifying papers on ‘Indian Languages’ and
‘English’ but the papers on Éssay', General Studies and Optional Subject of only such candidates will be
taken cognizance who attain 25% marks in ‘Indian Language’ and 25% in English as minimum qualifying
standards in these qualifying papers.
(iii) The paper A on Indian Language will not, however, be compulsory for candidates hailing from the States
of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim.
(iv) The paper A on Indian Language will not, however, be compulsory for Candidates belonging to Persons
with Benchmark Disability (only Hearing Impairment sub-category) provided that they have been granted
such exemption from 2nd or 3rd language courses by the concerned education Board/University. The
candidate needs to provide an undertaking/self declaration in this regard in order to claim such an
exemption to the Commission.
(v) Marks obtained by the candidates for the Paper I-VII only will be counted for merit ranking. However,
the Commission will have the discretion to fix qualifying marks in any or all of these papers.
(vi) For the Language medium/literature of languages, the scripts to be used by the candidates will be as
under:—
Language Script
Assamese Assamese
Bengali Bengali
Gujarati Gujarati
Hindi Devanagari
Kannada Kannada
Kashmiri Persian
Konkani Devanagari
Malayalam Malayalam
Manipuri Bengali or Meitei Mayek
Marathi Devanagari
Nepali Devanagari
Odia Odia
Punjabi Gurumukhi
Sanskrit Devanagari
Sindhi Devanagari or Arabic

Government strives to have a workforce which reflects gender balance and women candidates are encouraged to apply.