The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is respected for its impartial selection process and timely declaration of results, which may not be the case for other exams in India. But recently, there was a controversy in Kerala where a minister as a rebuke to certain allegations against him pointed fingers at the civil services exam.

He alleged that the son of a top political leader from Kerala getting very high marks in the civil services interview was suspicious. He even stated that the person got only 600th rank after the written exam, but got 210th rank after the interview!

This serious allegation against a constitutional body shows the ignorance about the interview process of civil services exam, which is different from other exams.

All about the test

The civil services exam has two parts - Preliminary and Main. The marks of the Preliminary exam are not added to the final ranking. The Main stage is divided into two parts - the written part and the personality test. The Main written exam is for 1,750 marks (250 marks each for seven papers).

The candidates need to make an aggregate cut-off to qualify for the personality test. No minimum marks per paper is required. The personality test is for 275 marks. Again, there is no cut-off mark. The aggregate of the Main written exam and personality test is used for the final ranking. So, there is no separate rank list after the Main written exam as claimed by the minister.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, the marks of the written test will be announced only after the final result. So, both the candidate and the interview board will not have any idea about how much marks the candidate has scored in the Main exam. This rules out the possibility of someone influencing the interview board to compensate for low written marks, as one does not know whether the score is low or high.

Interview process

Now, let us see how the process of personality test happens. First and foremost, one needs to understand that all the candidates will be interviewed by a board of competent and unbiased observers. Each board will have one member of the UPSC as the chairman (who is from the civil services / academics / defence background) and four domain experts as members. Two of them will be retired officers (one from the IAS who retired from the service at the level of secretary to the government and one from other services like IFS, IPS or Central Services). The other two experts are from academics: one from humanities and the other from science and technology.

These experts are changed after every week. The group of candidates going to face a particular board will be decided only on the day of the interview where the names of the candidates in a group will be presented to the UPSC chairman in a sealed envelope. The chairman marks the board’s number without opening the envelope. Then the respective envelopes will be handed over to the board chairman. Pre-arrangement and fixing are almost impossible.

An interview lasts for 15 minutes to one hour (30 minutes in most cases). Once the candidate leaves after completing the interview, the chairperson and board members will have a discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate and then arrive at a consensus on the marks to be awarded.

Normally the marks range between 20 per cent (55) to 75 per cent (206), but an outstanding performance may fetch 80 per cent (220). All efforts are made to keep each board informed of the pattern of marking happening in other boards for ensuring a degree of uniformity. From the afternoon of the first day onwards, each board is shown at the beginning of each session an analysis of the marks awarded by the different boards to make them aware of the range of marks. This is to help in avoiding extreme marks as much as possible.

People who scored less than 50 per cent marks in the personality test have managed to get into the top 10 rankings because of the high scores in the written exam. Whereas people who were interview toppers with 75 per cent marks have failed to make it to the top ranks. When it comes to the children of political leaders making it to the civil services, it’s a personal choice and they never get any undue advantage.

Political vendetta should not be used for tarnishing the reputation of a constitutional body on which thousands of youngsters cast their hopes.

(The author is a former IPS officer and a trainer for civil services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)

This article originally appeared on OnManorama.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store