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Central Administrative Tribunal issues notice to UPSC over 8 civil services exam questions

Eight civil services prelims exam questions have come under legal challenge before the Central Administrative Tribunal, with applicants claiming they could affect more than16 marks.

UPSC Civil Services Prelims Exam 2026 challenged questions Central Administrative Tribunal

The next hearing of the case is scheduled for October 8, 2026, while the Civil Services (Main) Examination is scheduled from August 21 to August 31. (File Photo)

Written by: Somya Tyagi

3 min readNew DelhiAug 20, 2026 04:04 PM IST First published on: Aug 20, 2026 at 02:20 PM IST

The Central Administrative Tribunal has issued a notice to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in a plea filed by students challenging the questions from General Studies and CSAT papers in the recently conducted Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination. The students have alleged that 8 questions in these exams did not carry any “correct option among the four choices given as answers”. They said that the “errors” have impacted a tally of more than 16 marks (including negative marking).

While the Civil Services (Main) Examination is set to start from August 21, the next hearing of the case before the Central Administrative Tribunal is scheduled for October 8.

On August 17, advocate Shantanu Jugtawat, appearing for the students, requested the tribunal to pass an interim order permitting the applicants to ‘provisionally’ take the Civil Services (Main) Examination, 2026, as their case was pending before the court. He also requested directions to UPSC to disclose whether the objections raised by the applicants have been dealt with and to increase the number of candidates declared qualified to appear in the Civil Services (Main) Examination, 2026.

Background

The applicants had appeared for General Studies Paper-I and CSAT Paper-II of the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination of 2026, conducted by UPSC on May 24, 2026. After the examination, the commission on 27 May 2026 published a provisional answer key and invited objections to it.

After comparing the provisional answers with reliable sources like government documents, international conventions, statutory notifications, and official ministry records, the applicants discovered mistakes in the question paper as at least 8 questions had no correct option among the four choices given as answers, and these errors impacted more than 16 marks (including negative marking) in total, which would become important when it came to qualifying cut-off marks for the main examination.

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The applicants had submitted detailed online objections against the questions on the UPSC Question Paper Representation Portal within the official representation window provided by the commission. According to the plea filed before the tribunal, the applicants also sent an e-mail to the commission on June 2, 2026, where they set out the factual and legal basis for each disputed question and requested that the commission review and correct the provisional answer key before it became final. However, no response was received from the Union Public Service Commission.

Since the evaluation of the disputed questions was likely to have a direct impact on the applicants’ “prospects” of qualifying for the Civil Services (Main) Examination, which was starting from August 21, 2026, the applicants had to approach the tribunal as there was no satisfactory response from the commission.