UPSC may announce revised calendar for deferred Civil Services Prelims exams 2020; check upsc.gov.in

New Delhi: Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has released a notification stating that it will announce the UPSC IAS Prelims Exam Date 2020 on June 5 after analysing the COVID-19 situation in the country. Those candidates who submitted their application to appear for this examination should visit the official website-https://upsc.gov.in/ to know the revised schedule for the preliminary examination. 

Notably, the UPSC will conduct the Civil Services Prelims Exam for the recruitment of as many as 796 vacant posts of IAS/IPS/IFS/MISC. Earlier, the Prelims exam was scheduled to be held on May 31, 2020, but the Commission decided to postpone it in view of the COVID-19 outbreak in India. 

The candidates who applied for the UPSC Civil Services Recruitment 2020 should now start their preparation as the schedule for the upcoming exams will ne announced in the first week of June. 

The UPSC Prelims 2020 exams will be held in two sessions: GS Paper 1 and GS Paper 2 CSAT. It will be held offline in pen and paper mode and the candidates will be required to mark their answers in the OMR Sheet. 

The candidates would be expected to answer questions on current events, Indian History, Indian Geography, World Geography, Indian Polity, Indian Economy, General Science, Quantitative Aptitude, Reasoning Ability and English Language. 

Both the papers will be held on the same day in a duration of 2 hours. The paper will be based on the negative marking pattern under which 1/3rd marks for every wrong answer would be deducted. 

The total marks allotted for each paper is 200 marks. The GS CSAT paper is qualifying in nature, therefore, candidates need to score atleast 33% percent marks to pass this paper. 

It may be noted that Personality Tests of the candidates who qualified the mains exams fo the last year have also been deferred. The UPSC stated, "Due to the prevailing conditions caused by the Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19), as a precautionary measure, the Personality Tests (Interviews) of the candidates of the Civil Services (Main) Examination, 2019 scheduled from 23rd March, 2020 to 3rd April, 2020 are deferred till further orders."

"New dates for the Personality Tests (Interviews) will be informed to the candidates in due course of time," it added.