Civils prelims surprised aspirants

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has conducted the Civil Services Prelims examination on August 7, 2016. As per civil aspirants, this year’s paper is a heavy dose of current affairs, mainly focused on Union Government’s pet schemes, in contrast to the traditional areas of Geography, History and Polity which are ignored in paper.

There is a difference in number of questions asked for various subjects. Every year, more than 16 questions are asked from Indian history and culture section. The marked difference is noticed in the geography section too, where the number of questions asked is comparatively less than the previous year, especially in the physical geography section.

On analysis of question paper, the paper on general awareness normally comprises questions on a wide range of areas listed in the syllabus like current events, history of India, world geography, Indian polity and governance, economic and social development, environmental ecology and general science.

However, about 40-45 questions were asked from economy and current affairs that had an overarching emphasis on Central Government schemes. Even in science and technology section, the main focus was on current affairs topics related to subject and very few questions were asked in the polity section.

Overall this year questions were on current affairs, system and governance, law, social and economic law and there changes. The cut-off for an average student will be around 110-120 numbers.

Most of the aspirants, who have attended prelims on Sunday, expressed their dismay for the unpredictability of the questions and felt that it lacked the necessary equilibrium to accommodate that majority aspirants focus on.

The Civil Services Exam is conducted to select candidates to fill administrative positions in different All-India Services and Central Civil Services including IAS, IPS, IFS and IRTS. With over 11.36 lakh applications for 1079 vacancies, which include 34 reserved for P.H.C, the examiner has no choice but to design the distribution and the composition of the paper in the most unpredictable manner and the UPSC had lived up to its proverbial label of being unpredictable UPSC, opined many coaching institutions.

This is not the first time the UPSC has done something like this. The UPSC last year has surprised the aspirants on designing the unpredictability questions, by asking 33 questions on current affairs of which 18 were international current affairs, while general knowledge has 18 questions with 9 questions each from government schemes and on related government organizations, 17 questions on economics, 16 with environment and 15 with history. Aspirants were also surprised with 8 questions in Technology.

The unexpected pattern has hurt several aspirants, more so those who are good at aptitude and reasoning as the marks from the aptitude paper would not be considered for determining merit. Aptitude is just a qualifying paper now while marks for merit would be considered from the general awareness paper.

Meanwhile, only 37,521 of the 99,555 aspirants who had applied for the examination from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh appeared at the preliminary examination. The exam was held at six centres in AP and Telangana – Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Anantapur, Tirupati and Warangal.

However, now prelims exam is over, but attention is now on Cut-off marks. The IAS and coaching institutes keep giving hypothetical cut off marks for the Prelims exam, which is beyond the reality. The cut off marks depends on the level of difficulty of the question paper and the overall preparation of the IAS aspirants.

The second preposition is very difficult to ascertain. On the basis of average preparation and the previous year trends, it is arrived to a conclusion that this year the cut off marks for the Prelims exam will increase to greater than 110 marks for the general candidates and rest of the cut off marks will increase accordingly. The nature of questions was direct from the text books and current affairs and the difficulty level was rather moderate baring one or two questions.