‘UPSC Prelims marred by paper leaks, irregularities’, demands for answer key, cut-off, OMR sheet intensify

Demands for Union Public Service Commission Civil Services Examination (UPSC CSE) Prelims answer key and cut-off marks have been intensified with several alleging irregularities in the exam including paper leak and result manipulation, violations of rules, and lack of transparency.

Now, a social activist has flagged issues with the UPSC CSE Prelims result, urging the President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and UPSC chairman Ajay Kumar to order a judicial inquiry into paper leak allegations and suspicious roll number patterns and clustering seen in the civil services results.

In a letter to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, PM office, and UPSC office, Vijay Kumbhar alleged that the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) exam has been marred by paper leaks, unsealed packets of question papers, and misuse of CSAT paper.

Several UPSC CSE candidates complained that the Prelims question paper packets were found without a seal before distribution during the exam, which is a ‘grave breach of standard security protocol’, the activist noted. He also highlighted that the candidates were not provided with their response sheets, making them unable to verify their answers, and were not given the opportunity to raise objections.

UPSC Prelims result 'tampered'

The failure of the commission to publish UPSC CSE Prelims answer key 2025 and UPSC Prelims cut-off 2025 shows violation of norms for transparency and accountability, the Right to Information (RTI) activist noted, and referred to media reports claiming question paper leaks. “Furthermore, the appearance of several identical roll number triplets in the result list raises concerns about potential result tampering,” Kumbhar said.

Moreover, the AAP leader found a weak monitoring system with UPSC exam centres lacking CCTV surveillance. Another issue that caused problems to the aspirants, especially for those from non-technical and regional backgrounds, was the difficulty level of the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) paper which has turned into an elimination tool, he added.

The author also cited additional concerns such as arbitrary dropping of questions from the Prelims paper without any reason, lack of access to interview transcripts in UPSC Mains exam, inconsistency in scaling of optional subjects, and misuse of EWS and disability certificates.

In light of the issues, Kumbhar has demanded reforms in CSAT paper, disclosure of minimum and maximum marks per question, independent audit of scaling and evaluation methods apart from immediate and mandatory release of UPSC Prelims official answer key, cut-off, and OMR sheets.