About Civil Services Mains

As per the notification issued by the Department of Personnel and Training, Civil Services (Mains) Exam will have a new pattern from year 2013 onwards.

Following is the allocation of marks according to new pattern (from 2013 onwards):

PAPER AREA/SUBJECT Maximum Marks (From 2013 onwards) Maximum Marks (previous-till 2012)
Qualifying Paper-A One of the Indian Languages from the languages included in the eighth schedule 300 300
Qualifying Paper-B English 300 300
1 Essay 250 200
2 GS-I (Indian Heritage and Culture, History and Geography of the World and Society) 250 600 marks (Previously, these four papers existed as two papers each of 300 marks)
3 GS-II (Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International Relations) 250
4 GS-III (Technology, Economic Development, Bio-Diversity, Environment, Security and Disaster Management) 250
5 GS-IV (Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude) 250
6 Optional Subject (I) Paper-1 250 300
7 Optional Subject (I) Paper-2 250 300
8 Optional Subject (II) Paper-1 Not Applicable 300
9 Optional Subject (II) Paper-1 Not Applicable 300
WRITTEN TOTAL 1750 2000
PERSONALITY TEST (INTERVIEW) 275 300
GRAND TOTAL 2025 2300

Click here to download the Civil Services Mains 2013 Notification & Syllabus

Following are the changes in the Written Part of the Main Examination of Civil Services Exam:

1) Instead of two optionals, candidates will now be required to take only one optional on which there will be two papers

2) General Studies is now divided into four papers instead of the earlier two papers

3) The papers on 'Indian Language & English' will be qualifying in nature. The marks obtained will not be counted for final ranking.

4) A separate paper on 'Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude' has been included as part of General Studies.

5) Marks for interview have been reduced from 300 to 275 marks.

6) Marks allotted for different papers (General Studies and Optional) have been reduced to 250 per paper.

7) Candidates will have the option of answering any of the question papers(except Qualifying Papers) in any of the Indian languages