New Delhi: A Delhi-based 31-year-old Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) aspirant appeared for the preliminary examination on 28 May. She has since been spending sleepless nights waiting for the results.
The second paper of the preliminary examination, called the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), turned out to be so difficult that, despite being a tech student, she couldn’t get to all the math questions.
Speaking to ThePrint, she said: “This was my sixth and last attempt. Never has the CSAT exam been this difficult. It almost seems like the UPSC wants only tech background students to be able to clear the exam. If the current math questions took us five minutes instead of the required one minute to solve, there is no way a non-tech background student would have been able to solve them.”
She is one of the lakhs of candidates who appeared for the central civil services examinations this year. Several UPSC aspirants have claimed that the qualifying paper CSAT was asymmetrical in its make and heavily tilted towards questions on Mathematics.
On 8 June, a group of over 4,000 aggrieved students filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Central Administrative Tribunal — a system set up for adjudication of disputes and complaints with respect to recruitment and conditions of service of persons appointed to public services and posts — demanding that the cut-off for the paper be reduced from 33 per cent to 23 per cent this year.
Saaket Jain, the legal counsel representing the students, told ThePrint, “The matter was listed for hearing on Friday. While the Tribunal has refused to direct the Commission to keep the preliminary result in abeyance as demanded by the applicants, the matter is now listed for hearing on 6 July 2023.”
The results of the preliminary exams are likely to be declared in the coming week.
Students claimed that of the 80 questions, over 25-30 questions in the paper relied heavily on digits and mathematical application-based problem solving.
ThePrint found that the CSAT paper — in which questions are split between several topics like logic and reasoning, reading comprehension, basic numeracy, etc — had the mention of the word ‘digit’ 33 times and the word ‘digits’ 14 times. The questions asked in the examination were on the subjects of probability, permutation and combination and number systems, all beyond the course material of the mandated difficulty level of class 10 mathematics.
ThePrint reached UPSC chairman Manoj Soni and secretary Vasudha Mishra for a comment over email. The copy will be updated if and when a response is received.
Also read: Not a ‘mix-up’ — UPSC claims duo forged documents to pose as civil service exam rank-holders
‘Great injustice to thousands of poor applicants’
Siddharth Mishra, a 32-year-old aspirant and the main petitioner in the case filed, is highly disappointed with the difficulty level of the examination this year. Speaking to ThePrint he said, “I have been getting calls from students from rural areas and economically backward students regarding the difficulty level. Our main grouse is how some of the questions were from JEE and CAT preparation material. Not to mention the out of syllabus questions on mathematics”
The students have argued that if the difficulty level of the first level examination was meant to be this high, then they should have been informed beforehand so that they could have prepared in accordance with the syllabus.
Another student who lives in rural Haryana said that because of his poor economic background he was unable to avail the services of a coaching centre. However, he believes that he has every right to appear for the examination as an equal candidate, a right which was denied to him this year.
Speaking to ThePrint on condition of anonymity, he said, “Every month students like me scrounge and save whatever little money we have in order to buy data packs and reading material to prepare for the UPSC exam. The prelims are meant to be an exam which provides a level playing field to all candidates. This year we were denied that right.”
On the non-stay on the matter in the tribunal, he said, “The questions were clearly out of syllabus, yet the results will be declared as if nothing went wrong with the exam. If the UPSC does not take our grievances into account this year, they will be doing a great injustice to thousands of poor applicants like me.”
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
Also read: ‘Not a sob story’: UPSC 2nd-ranker put off by focus on dad’s death, says ‘it doesn’t define me’