Paper Leaks, Ignored RTIs, 'Ambiguity': Why Aspirants Are Questioning the UPSC

New Delhi: Across the country, numerous young Indians are brought up with the aspiration to one day join the "services". Exams conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) – the government's primary and most prestigious gateway for recruitment into coveted Union government jobs – are ones people spend years of their lives preparing for. But for many, those dreams have been coloured by the murky realities of the way exams have been conducted.

“We’re on the streets now, questioning the very UPSC we once dreamed of serving,” says Dev, a former aspirant who joined a protest against what many like him call the “inefficiency” of the UPSC.

Dev is not alone in his disappointment, anger and anguish with the UPSC. Several other aspirants, their parents and their educators have raised questions and even protested, like the one on June 28 in New Delhi’s UPSC preparation capital – Old Rajinder Nagar.

On June 11, when the results for the civil services preliminary exams were announced, voices usually buried under the weight of preparation books and previous years’ question papers were suddenly out in the open. A flood of unanswered grievances and serious allegations of fraud have washed up the shore of the UPSC. To understand these allegations and issues, The Wire spoke with several aspirants and educators in the race to reach the top ranks.

Answer keys and ambiguities

The recent protest in Delhi was a display of the myriad grievances students had. One of the protestors, Shivam Singh, told The Wire that the results were ‘strange’. Singh was not the only aspirant who said this. Other current and former UPSC aspirants said that stranger trends were unravelling in the prelims results.

For instance, Singh said that the ‘triplet controversy’, which came to light right after the 2025 prelims results, was shaking the faith of aspirants. Many aspirants noticed that three consecutive roll numbers – often corresponding to candidates seated in the same room and row – were in fact the ones selected for the 'mains'. This, many alleged, was indicative of widespread cheating within certain centres.

To fill a total of 1,105 vacancies, on June 16, 2024, about 13.4 lakh students took the UPSC prelims exam at 79 centres across India. In 2023, a total of about 13.3 lakh students had applied – the number is going up each year. Only a minute 0.2% of those who give the exam make the cut. Disgruntled candidates said that the organisers of this exam – one of the most competitive in India – must clear the air if any ambiguities arise.

Another issue raised was about reports of a paper leak just a day before the preliminary examination, on May 24, 2025 were published by a Gujarati newspaper. The report alleged that leaked question papers were available for purchase for Rs 30,000 in Rajkot, Gujarat. The exam was to be held on the next day, May 25. Surprisingly enough, Gujarat has had the highest number of candidates to qualify the prelims – 300 candidates from the state, the highest ever, qualified for the mains.

Kajal Chatterjee, an aspirant from Kolkata who attempted the exam recently, was astounded by this sequence of events. “There are staggering anomalies in question papers. This year at least eight to 10 questions were vague and ambiguous, where there can be no one correct answer. This, they [other aspirants also protesting] said, leaves enough room for arbitrary selection of answers, while dropping others options,” she told The Wire.

Chatterjee also highlighted how three answers in the 2024 preliminary examination’s final official answer key were wrong. “This means by the time a candidate moves to court to challenge the key, the results have already been published. Some candidates are now civil servants! They have literally marked the wrong answers as correct,” she argued.

Abhishek Sundar, a candidate from Karnataka, pointed out yet another flaw within the system: the delayed release of answer keys, which delays the prospect of raising issues in case of inaccuracies. “UPSC does not release their official answer keys until the final selection process is over; this makes the answers key useless... since the final merit list stands published by then”, he lamented.

No Right to Information

Behind viral YouTube videos alleging fraud in the exam and "forwarded many times" WhatsApp messages, online campaigns and viral tweets are aspirants who have filed RTIs and lodged complaints to bring the UPSC's attention to visible irregularities.

Saurabh Abhishek gave his last attempt at the exams recently, and is feeling defeated. Not because of his result, but at the obliviousness of India’s oldest competitive exam conducting agency. To prevent inaccuracies from meddling with the futures of other candidates, Abhishek filed an RTI application, which The Wire has accessed, to try and get a response from the UPSC.

In his RTI application, Abhishek raised requests to obtain the details of his own marks in the exam conducted on May 25, the cut off for the same exam, the official answer key for the exam, a copy of his OMR sheet, and the number of correct and incorrect responses in his answer sheet. If the Commission chose not to provide these details, Abhishek, from Bihar, also requested them to state the reason for this.

To his requests, the UPSC has responded with a simple 'no'. The commission stated that the declaration of the final result was yet to be completed, so no information could be shared. Abhishek’s RTI was filed on June 19, more than a week after the results were declared. “What stops them from sharing the details of the result? Even state commissions share copy of OMR sheet right after people appear for the exam. What stops them from being transparent, that too in a qualifying exam, the marks of which won't even be considered for the final merit list?” asked Abhishek.

Others agreed with Abhishek when he added, “When discrepancies in NEET are taken seriously, even to the CBI level, what is wrong when we are just seeking our own answer sheets?”

Another candidate from Jammu, Dr Himanshi Guleria, also lodged a complaint using the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS). In her complaint, she emphasised various problematic aspects such as ambiguous questions with unclear or multiple valid answers, transparency gaps, delayed release of the official answer key and the lack of a grievance redressal mechanism to contest ambiguities or resolve concerns about evaluation methods.

Speaking to The Wire, Guleria shared how the whole process made candidates totally powerless, with no access to the answer keys and mechanisms to question the process, and no clarity about their performance for an entire year. “Each point makes a difference, each mark makes a difference, we are stuck in a void of ambiguity with this. We need more clarity and the right to obtain details of our own performance,” she said.

To her complaint, the UPSC responded that questions as well as answer keys of objective-type question papers were prepared by a team of experts and reviewed by another team of experts and the OMR answer sheets were evaluated as per procedure. The response also said, “The Commission drops ambiguous question(s) (if any) from evaluation on the advice of experts. As regard the excessive difficulty in CSAT it is informed that General Studies Paper-II is qualifying in nature and Questions and answer keys are prepared by subject experts keeping the syllabus in mind. Moreover, as per the practice of the Commission the answer keys and cut-off marks of the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination is uploaded on the Commission's website only after the entire process of Civil Services Examination is over i.e. after declaration of final result” and dismissed the complaint.

Despite the dismissal of the complaint, Guleria also runs an online petition regarding the same issue.

Uncertain, unresolved

In Rajasthan’s Jaipur, Mukesh Pukhraj is an educator and a mentor for scores of candidates who wish to compete for India’s toughest competitive exam. While Pukhraj continues to teach all those who reach out to him, he too believes that the exam system has become obsolete and is in dire need of pragmatic, logistical changes.

Pukhraj also highlighted the way question papers were being framed. “You need to look at the questions in the CSAT exam, this exam tests aptitude, but the comprehension questions were ambiguous and numerically extraneous. Even faculties at coaching institutes were rendered inept at solving them. Then what aptitude are these exams testing?” he asked.

Amit Kilhor, another educator from Gurgaon who has been coaching hundreds of students for almost a decade, believes that the Commission’s recruitment system has become massively flawed and absolutely chance based. Kilhor said, “It is time that certain reforms are made. What good is it doing to anyone when answer keys are withheld for a year? Who gains and what? Question papers have actively wrong questions. There are long term structural problems in the constitutional body and certificate frauds like Puja Khedekar are just the tip of the iceberg,” Kilhor alleged.

Pukhraj and Kilhor said that there is mounting discontent and dissatisfaction among candidates primarily because their allegations and apprehensions are not being clarified, addressed or even acknowledged by the Commission.

Recently, on March 28, the Parliamentary Standing Committee in its 145th Report stated that UPSC’s delayed disclosure “undermines transparency and fairness” and can demoralise candidates.

The report said, “This delays candidates’ ability to challenge potential errors before advancing to the next stage, undermining transparency and fairness. Such a practice can demoralise candidates and raise concerns about the validity of the examination.”

Yet, the results were delivered a whole year later, amid rising allegations of ambiguity and deaths by suicide of candidates, who waited a whole year to be failed, like many others.

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