On Thursday, The Union Public Service Commission(UPSC) made an announcement the civil services examination that was supposed to be held on June 27, has now been postponed because of the rise in COVID-19 cases in the country.
The exam has been postponed to October 10, giving three months extra for preparation to the aspirants.
“Due to the unwanted conditions caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19), this further created a worrisome situation in the nation and forced the Union Public Service Commission to postpone the civil services (preliminary) examination which was supposed to be held on June 27, 2021. Now the examination has been scheduled on October 10, 2021,” said the commission.
The IAS preliminary examination of 2021 was earlier scheduled to be held on June 27, 2021, and the notification for the same was carried out on March 4, 2021. The last date for filling up the registration form was March 24, 2021. This year’s examination notification was issued for 712 vacancies.
Last year’s UPSC IAS preliminary exam was supposed to be held on May 31, but due to the pandemic and lockdown reasons, the commission had to postpone the examination and was conducted on October 4 across the nation.
For those who don’t know, the commission conducts civil services examination annually in three stages – preliminary, mains, and interview – to find out the best aspirants among lakhs of applied registrations for Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), an Indian Police Service (IPS).
The IAS exam is considered the most difficult examination in the country because of its vast syllabus and cut-off marks.
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The way an IAS exam is conducted is a way different from all the other government exams. It is conducted simultaneously as it requires a large-scale mobilization of resources at the state level.
It is the duty of District Magistrates to finalize IAS exam centers and then the confirmation for the selected exam centers is sent directly to the UPSC through Chief Secretaries of the representative states.
It is the duty of police personnel for the security of the IAS question papers and at the UPSC exam centers too.
The preliminary round of the IAS exam is an objective type of exam, meaning it is conducted offline in pen and paper mode. There will be two question papers in the preliminary round and both the papers are of qualifying in nature.
The score achieved in the preliminary round is not considered for the UPSC result. As an applicant passes the preliminary round, then he/she is eligible to sit for the mains round followed by the final round, that is, the final interview.
