Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2026: Why did a senior citizen take the test?

Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2026:

Why did a senior citizen take the test?

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) conducted the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination on May 24, 2026, for the vacancies in various All-India services like the IAS, IPS, IFS, and other Central Group A and Group B services; 5.49 lakh candidates for 933 posts. Success rate: 0.17%. Brutal. 

But why did a senior citizen take this test? And how? Isn’t that illegal? Wasn’t each candidate screened through Face-Recognition technology?

It all began with a call.
On 26 May 2026, his neighbour and friend, also a senior citizen, called. He sounded rather upset.
“Did you check the video I had forwarded in the morning?”
“No, not yet. What was it about?”
“CSE GS Paper I. Believe it or not, it was 56 pages long; and exceptionally tough – the toughest ever, claim the candidates. When the candidates came out from the exam centre, sabke chehre utre huye the.”

“Maybe, they had received message from ATM (Any Time Money), aka father that failure to clear the prelim would invite cancellation of further stipend. Or, dehydrated owing to the excessive heat at Bhopal!”
“No, not the heat. It was the tough paper which sucked out all hope. Why does UPSC set such papers a mere reading of which would take an hour or more?”

(AI-generated Image by CoPilot)

Both the senior citizens are former civil servants, had triumphed at no less challenging tests, though that was several decades ago.
Just curious, the one who had been called, downloaded the paper from the UPSC portal. He had a crazy idea. Why not check the level of difficulty? What better way than to take the test?

He alerted the spouse that he would be busy with very important work, and should not be disturbed except in an emergency such as the household running out of water or cooking gas.

He took out a sheet of blank paper and a pen, opened the PDF, and began solving the Paper. His resolution to finish the paper in the allotted 120 minutes could not be achieved since he was summoned to duty for peeling potatoes, chopping onions, and other such chores which could not wait; so, he finished the test in three sittings over two days.
UPSC may test knowledge, but the spouse demands tangible performance and insists upon prompt compliance.

In the meantime, WhatsApp messages told that the UPSC had uploaded the Answer Keys. However, he was too conscientious to cheat, and continued till he answered the 100th Q.

Did the paper have 56 pages? Yes, the bilingual set with both Hindi and English versions, and including 4 blank pages for Rough Work. Thus, the Questions occupied 26 pages, with text of about 4500 words. How long would it take to read the Qs? At a slow, mindful reading speed of 100 words per minute, no longer than 45 minutes.

As per his habit of youthful, exam-taking years, he ran through the Qs from 1-100, without actually answering any, to check how many answers he was confident of getting right. Why even read the whole question if he knew nothing about it? If he got 50 answers right, he can skip the rest since the cut-off in previous years has consistently been a little above 90 and way below 100. Why lose 1/3rd of a mark for every incorrect answer?

He considered himself intelligent, well-read, and with good awareness of the happenings in his town, state, country, and the world. He keenly monitored the status in Hormuz strait, the Brent Crude rate, the domestic prices of POL and cooking gas, the heat score in his city, and similar essential matters.

But all that was of no help. Sadly, UPSC asked nothing about onions or Brent Crude. He broke into a sweat upon finding that he wasn’t 100 per cent sure about more than a few questions. For about 40 questions, he was strongly confident (80%) that he knew the answer, but a few errors couldn’t be ruled out since several questions were purposely ambiguous, and designed to trip a candidate with less than a deep understanding of the subject matter.

For example, he knew that Buddhism, to begin with, forbade worship of any icon, including that of the Buddha; but relented later to provide for a pedestal with a blank seat as a symbol of the Buddha. Much later came the elaborate Buddhist iconography, and sculptures at Bharhut, Sanchi, Amaravati, Ajanta and Ellora. But he had no idea if the blank seat on the pedestal symbolised the Buddha in meditation, at the First Sermon, or Mahaparinibbana. So, he had to pass the question. Why risk minus marking?

Another question, presumably designed to test a candidate’s reverence for our proud heritage and mastery of Sanskrit texts, asked: In which of these does the term kshetra‑patni (mistress of the field) occur — Rigveda, Atharvaveda, Ashtadhyayi, or Arthashastra?

During his hectic work-life, he had devoted what time he could to the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Gita, and the Upanishads; but no, he hadn’t read any of the above tomes. And even if he had, was he expected to memorize which stray word appeared in which book? It struck him that the absence of this esoteric information had never once hindered his long civil service career — neither in drafting policies, nor in handling crises.

Hey AI, can you solve this paper?

 He challenged ChatGPT to solve the paper, with the following prompt:

“I'm uploading a PDF - CSE 2026 - GS Paper I. Please solve the paper without reference to Answer Keys published by the UPSC or the Coaching Institutes. I plan to run this test with CoPilot, Gemini, and Perplexity, too. The idea is to compare the capability of the AI tools. So, please be honest.”

Thereafter, he repeated the query to other AI tools.

Each App offered to help, assuring that it’d independently answer the questions without reference to the answer keys provided by the UPSC or available in the public domain.

ChatGPT answered 1-20 Qs, and then told, ‘You’ve exhausted your free quota of questions for the day. Upgrade to continue.’

No thanks, I don’t wish to buy a subscription. Too expensive for a pensioner.

Gemini did a little better, answering 40 Qs after which it demanded that I chat on a New Topic.

CoPilot gave a few answers, and asked me to upload the remaining pages in instalments.

But, I’ve a single PDF; can you please read the pages containing the next questions?

No, I can’t do that, but will help if you upload the relevant pages only.

He gave up. He inferred that the AI tools sweated at the task; maybe their super-computers heated up and commanded them to terminate this wasteful endeavour and reduce global warming.

Congratulations, UPSC, you’ve beaten AI. Only super-smart humans can solve this paper.

Answer Keys

The senior citizen downloaded the UPSC Answer Keys, and scored his answer sheet. Driven by decades of bureacratic habit, he sealed it in an envelope marked ‘Top Secret,’ and locked it in his personal vault. 

UPSC remains undefeated. AI sweats, humans weep, and senior citizens… peel onions.

Previous Blogs on CSE Prelim & AI

Links for previous blogs on CSE Prelim Exam & AI:

https://www.pkdash.in/2023/02/chatgpt-fails-ias-exam.html

https://www.pkdash.in/2023/03/bing-cracks-ias-exam.html

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Postscript

It is believed that the All India Federation of Pensioners have issued a terse advisory to the test-taker to refrain from such foolhardy adventure in future.

What if the government made continuation of pension contingent upon the pensioners passing the CS Prelim Exam every year with the minimum qualifying score of 35 per cent?   

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Annexe: Two Sample Questions

So very easy; a walk in the park!

Q. 71