New Delhi: Nearly 5.49 lakh candidates appeared in the civil services preliminary examination held on Sunday, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) said.
For the first time this year, the commission introduced real-time face authentication of candidates at examination venues to prevent impersonation and strengthen the integrity of the examination process.
The indigenously developed system through the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) worked perfectly across all examination venues, the UPSC said in a statement.
This was possibly the largest real-time face-authentication conducted by the UPSC and its 100 per cent success is a major step forward in the integrity processes of the commission, it said.
The UPSC conducted the civil services (preliminary) examination 2026, including the Indian Forest Service (preliminary) exam at 2,072 examination venues in 83 examination centres (cities) across the country.
Out of a total of 8,19,732 candidates who had applied for the examination, nearly 5.49 lakh candidates (around 67 per cent) appeared for the examination, as per the provisional data.
In the civil services (preliminary) examination 2025, out of nearly 9.5 lakh candidates who had applied for the examination, around 5.8 lakh candidates (approximately 61 per cent) had appeared for the examination.
Among total candidates who had applied for the examination, 11,224 belonged to the categories of Persons with Benchmark Disability (PwBD) (disability of 40 per cent or more) and Persons with Disability (PwD) (disability of less than 40 per cent).
“I am extremely happy with the efforts of the entire team of the UPSC along with the NeGD and the NIC (National Informatics Centre) which worked tirelessly towards the implementation this examination.
“Moreover, the implementation of the face-authentication protocol was perhaps one of the most complex operational exercises, and its smooth execution is a matter of great satisfaction,” UPSC Chairman Ajay Kumar said.
The examination was held in two mandatory sessions, commencing with General Studies (Paper-I) from 09:30 am to 11:30 am in the forenoon session, followed by the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) [Paper-II] from 02:30 pm to 04:30 pm in the afternoon session in strict compliance with the prescribed institutional guidelines and examination protocols, the UPSC said.
Among the highly crowded centres, Delhi recorded the highest application with 70,885 candidates across 144 venues, followed by Hyderabad with 44,209 candidates at 100 venues, while Patna recorded 39,147 candidates across 79 venues.
On the other hand, Kargil recorded the least number of candidates with 98 across one venue, followed by Port Blair with 270 candidates at one venue, while Leh (Ladakh) recorded 308 candidates across two venues, the commission said.
Mobile signal jammers were also deployed at all examination venues to ensure the fair and secure conduct of the examination, the statement said.
In an effort to decongest examination centres, the UPSC this year added three new examination centres at Bhubaneswar, Kanpur and Meerut.
The commission has also introduced an option enabling candidates to indicate their preferred nearby cities.
The commission will, for the first time, release the provisional answer key soon after the completion of the examination, it said. The commission will initially publish a provisional answer key and invite representations, if any, from candidates until 6:00 pm on the seventh day from the date of the examination, ie, till May 31.
All representations received will be carefully examined, along with the supporting documents submitted by candidates, before recording a considered view on the correctness of the answer key for the concerned questions, the statement said.
The final answer key, however, will be released only after the declaration of the final result of the civil services examination – 2026, in accordance with the commission’s existing practice, it said.
