Parliamentary panel discusses filling up of vacancies in central government, CSAT in Civil Services exam

Chaiperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, Brij Lal, said after the meeting that the progress in recruitment process is appropriate.

The committee will present a report to the parliament after its deliberations.

"The main agenda focused on vacancies within the central govt and its recruitment progress, as well as discussions concerning the DoPT, the SSC, UPSC and the Civil Services examinations," he said.

Asked if the progress in recruitment in filling central government vacancies is fine, he said "yes".

The government informed the Rajya Sabha earlier this year that UPSC has formulated guidelines to release the Provisional Answer Key on its official website after the Preliminary Examination is conducted.

This will be implemented from the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2026 onwards, for all structured examinations conducted by UPSC. Marks of the Preliminary Examination shall be released only after the declaration of final result of the Examination.

In order to ensure level playing field across optional subjects, UPSC applies inter-subject moderation to ensure that no candidate, regardless of the optional subject chosen, is placed at any disadvantage.

It said CSAT is a qualifying paper and its purpose is to ensure a minimum standard of quality and analytical competence. The level of questions corresponds to the matriculation level.

For challenging factual errors, UPSC has a dedicated portal named Question Paper Representation Portal (QPRep) accessible on its website.

Candidates can submit representations regarding discrepancies in question paper and provisional answer keys (with effect from Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2026 onwards) through the portal.

UPSC also deals with grievances submitted by candidates on Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) and emails. (ANI)