• The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has released the official notification for the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, 2025. 

• The CSE Prelims will be held on May 25.

• This year, the UPSC Civils Services is set to fill a total of 979 vacancies across different service cadres.

• The examination is conducted annually in three stages — preliminary, mains and interview — to select officers of Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service and Indian Police Service, among others.

• Candidates can apply for Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination online through website http://upsconline.gov.in. The online applications can be filled up to February 11 till 6pm.

• The photograph, uploaded by the candidate should not be more than 10 days old from the start of the online application process.

• Eligible candidates shall be issued an e-Admit Card on the last working day of the preceding week of the date of examination. The e-Admit Card will be made available on the UPSC website for downloading by the candidates. No Admit Card will be sent by post.

• The Prelims exam will consist of two papers of objective type (multiple choice questions) of 200 marks each. 

• This examination is meant to serve as a screening test only; the marks obtained in the Prelims exam 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 12 to 13 times the total approximate number of vacancies to be filled in the year. 

• 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 per cent 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.

Negative marking

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 happens to be correct and there will be the same penalty as above for that question.

iii) If a question is left blank, that is no answer is given by the candidate, there will be no penalty for that question.

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