More than half the candidates, who had registered for the UPSC civil services preliminary exam (CSAT) held on Sunday across the state, did not sit for the examination. A total of 48,173 candidates had registered for the exam. A mere 48 per cent attendance was recorded in Hyderabad. A total of 101 exam centres were set up in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, and Tirupati. Of them, 87 centres were located in Hyderabad alone for 36,600 candidates.
IAS coaching experts said that the large-scale absenteeism in the preliminary exam was a common phenomenon every year. They said only serious candidates confident of clearing the prelims, mains, and interviews appeared for the civils exam. Mr V. Gopala Krishna, director of a city-based IAS coaching centre, explained: “The question papers were error free. Paper-I was comparatively easier than last year, while paper-II was slightly tougher. Questions from all topics were covered, with special emphasis on polity and economics topics in paper-I.”
He stressed: “There was stress on analytical questions in paper-II and comprehension questions had a lot of weightage.” Mr Rajesh Saraf, course director of another institute, said that the question papers were on expected lines. He pointed out: “Paper-II had 80 questions. It had no ‘sections’. The questions from the seven test areas were not placed in any specific sequence.” The UPSC has not specified minimum marks for Papers I and II. There is no cut-off declared, and the UPSC will consider the total of the two papers.