UPSC Eligibility Criteria 2021

by Anuj jindal anujjindal

UPSC Exam Eligibility

Right of the bat, you must have a bachelor’s degree if you want to be eligible to take the IAS exams, and that is just one of the eligibility criteria.

There are other criteria of eligibility for UPSC as well that you definitely need to look into before applying for the IAS exam online.

So first and foremost, to be eligible to appear for the UPSC exam, you need to make sure that you meet the required educational qualifications.

The educational qualifications necessary to appear for the UPSC exams are not as steep as those required to appear for certain other exams like UGC NET and RBI Grade B.

By not steep I mean that the eligibility for UPSC does not require a minimum passing mark in your graduation certificate.

However, make no mistake. Do not let this fool you into thinking that the UPSC exam is in any way easier to crack than the others. The UPSC IAS exams are by far one of the toughest exams in India today. It would take a perfect IAS preparation strategy and a lot of hard work to make it through to be an IAS officer.

You’d also need the right IAS books to read and solve all IAS previous year question papers, both of which you can read about in the blogs I have written.

Anyway, tough or not, the very experience of attempting the IAS exams for the first time is something that is out of this world.

The sheer vastness of the IAS syllabus and the cleverness of the questions in the papers are sure to make you marvel at the scale of the exam.

Having said that I shall now go through the educational qualification-based UPSC eligibility criteria.

UPSC Eligibility Criteria - Qualifications, Age Limit & No. of Attempts

(I)Nationality :

(1) For the Indian Administrative Service candidate must be a citizen of India.

(2) For other services, a candidate must be either:—

(a) a citizen of India, or

(b) a subject of Nepal, or

(d) a Tibetan refugee who came over to India before 1st January 1962 with the intention of permanently settling in India, or (e) a person of Indian origin who has migrated from Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, East African countries of Kenya, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Zaire, Ethiopia, and Vietnam with the intention of permanently settling in India. Provided that a candidate belonging to categories (b), ©, (d), and (e) shall be a person in whose favor a certificate of eligibility has been issued by the Government of India.

A candidate in whose case a certificate of eligibility is necessary may be admitted to the examination but the offer of appointment may be given only after the necessary eligibility certificate has been issued to him/her by the Government of India.

(II) UPSC IAS Eligibility :

Age Limit Long story short – Gen:32, OBC:35, SC/ST:37, PWD:42

Compared to the criterion of educational qualification, the UPSC eligibility criteria of age limit, and nationality are things over which you, as a candidate, have no control. The most you can do is be done with your minimum educational qualification as soon as possible.

That way you’ll be able to save yourself the required number of attempts that you’d need to crack the UPSC exams. However, there are certain variations to this rule as well, depending on a number of factors. I will be enumerating each one in detail in the lines below.

I mention the issue of attempts here because it is common knowledge that very few candidates are able to crack the UPSC IAS exams in their first attempt itself.

UPSC Age Limit and Number of Attempts

If you are a candidate of the general category, you must belong to the age bracket of 21 to 31 years on the 1st day of August of the year of examination. The upper age limit for IAS and all the other services are relaxed for aspirants belonging to the categories of SC/ST/OBC/others.

(III) Minimum Educational Qualification:

A candidate must hold a degree of any of the Universities incorporated by an Act of the central or State Legislature in India or other educational institutions established by an Act of Parliament or declared to be deemed as a University under Section 3 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956 or possess an equivalent qualification.

(IV) Medical and Physical Standards:

Candidates must be physically fit according to physical standards for admission to Civil Services Examination, 2021 as per guidelines given in Appendix-III of Rules for Examination published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary dated 4th March, 2021.

Click here to Read About: UPSC Full Form

Source by: https://www.anujjindal.in/upsc-eligibility-criteria-and-salary-of-an-ias-officer/