Nearly 5.49 lakh candidates appeared in civil services preliminary exam, says UPSC

New Delhi, May 24 -- 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.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.