Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2013 held in State capital on Sunday. More than 32,000 applicants from the State capital applied for the prestigious civil services examination.
The screening examination for the main examination was held in different examination centres of State capital. The preliminary examination consisted of two papers of Objective type (multiple choice questions) and carried maximum of 400 marks in the subject sets.
UPSC will qualify around 13,000 candidates for writing the main paper according to the merit list of the preliminary examination.
Jayshree Dubey, a candidate appearing in the examination from MlB College Centre, said that in the first paper of general studies, which carried 200 marks, around 40 questions from Science, Ecology and environment sections were asked which made the paper tough for the humanities student.
Also the questions were factual and different from the previous years papers based on analysis. Even the science students found the questions tough as those required depth knowledge of facts.
Shikhar ICS institute Director Sunil Singh said that questions from the economics section increased a lot, last year only 11 questions from the section were included in the paper while this year the number has increased to 30.
Questions based on Indian politics and especially policies were completely missing from the paper. In civil services prelim exams 2012, around 27 questions were included from the section while this year hardly two questions were included.
The cut off marks for the first paper is expected to be around 50 per cent marks, added Singh.
Singh further said that the second paper of the examination - Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), consisting of 80 questions totaling 400 marks, was average but candidates found the paper lengthy due to 10 comprehensions.
Questions based on mathematics and reasoning were more included in the paper while decision making questions decreased in comparison to last year’ prelim paper. The cut off marks for the second paper will be around 60 per cent of marks