The Civil Services preliminary examination was successfully conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on August 7, 2016. More than 11 lakh aspirants registered for the preliminary exam.
PaGaLGuY spoke to some candidates about their exam, and they commented that overall, Paper I and Paper II were easier than last year. “Since the papers were easy, I feel the cut off for this year might be higher,” said Alok Tomar from New Delhi.
There was heavy emphasis on comprehension in Paper II. “Comprehensions made the paper lengthy. Luckily, there were no data interpretation questions, so there was enough time for other questions. Otherwise, it was easy. Mathematics was tricky, but the questions were simple,” said Somal Kumar from Mumbai.

With a total of 200 marks distributed over 80 questions, the negative marking scheme for Paper II is similar to Paper I. For every wrong answer a candidate will lose 1/3 of the mark for the allotted question. Ranjit Kumar Singh, a UPSC aspirant from Mumbai, said, “Paper II is of qualifying nature, I took my time and solved limited questions.”
Many candidates are expected to clear the preliminary exam. Nitin PatIe from Nagpur, said, “I fared equally well in both the papers. Taking mock tests helped me a lot. Today’s exam was definitely easier than previous years.”

Inputs from Priyank Pamkar, Vaishnav Mudbhatkal, Onkar Dichwalkar, Megha Mehta