UPSC Final Interviews: Merit or Caste?

Despite reservations, caste and economic backwardness cannot supersede merit. This is why the Union Public Service Commission’s latest decision to share the Caste and Economic background details with the selection committee that conducts the final interviews, after UPSC Mains Exams, has become controversial and contentious, as well as shocking and surprising. Ponder upon this. While choosing the country’s civil servants, the ones who manage and run it, is it important to focus on the candidate’s merits, academic qualifications, and IQ, or rather her caste, family’s economic status, and whether the candidates own land, and how much.
Is this the first time that this is happening? Senior government officers, who have acted as board members of the panel that takes the final interviews to select candidates under the prestigious and highly competitive Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examinations, swear that they have neither seen nor heard anything like this before. The nub of the current controversy lies in the information embedded in, what is called, the Detailed Application Forms (DAFs) of the 2,845 candidates selected for the final interviews, which started on January 7, 2025. Of these, 1,056 candidates will become the nation’s future civil servants, and join the various central services such as IAS, IPS, IFS, IRS, IIS, and others.
For the first time, contend former board members, the several-page DAFs that the UPSC has shared with the interview panel / selection committee members includes the caste, and income status of the candidates, as also the details of the land owned by them, and their family members. The former members are intrigued as to who authorized the UPSC to do so. After all, the interview panel does not need to know these details. All that it should know, given the meritocracy involved in UPSC selections despite the reservations, is a brief history of a candidate, and his/her academic and professional performances. This could easily have been provided in a separate form, or sheet, by the UPSC, rather than sharing the entire DAF.

Former civil servants that gfiles spoke to are intrigued about this new trend. They are unsure whether the Prime Minister’s Office, or the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) have any clue about it. Some feel that the UPSC may have unilaterally taken this decision. Others see deeper meanings and think that the key central government civil servants were aware of it, and tacitly encouraged it. This is where conspiracy theories kick in. For example, some civil servants told gfiles that sharing DAFs may be an insidious way to keep a track on the number of finally selected candidates from different castes, and economic classes. Others took a more extreme stance – sharing DAFs may enable the interview panel / selection committee to debar or eject candidates from minority communities.

An angry former board member told gfiles, “It appears nauseating that the selection committee would get to know about the candidate’s caste, and economic status during the final interviews. UPSC is known as an institution that selects the candidates based on academic qualifications, and intelligent quotient, rather than caste, economic background, or the status of parents.” This member was livid that the candidates’ final declarations on DAFs were implicitly shared with the selection committee. The standard disclosure reads:
“I Julius Caeser II (Name Changed) son/daughter of Julius Caesar I (Name Changed) Resident of village/town/city Ramesh Nagar district Jhumri Talaiya state UT hereby declare that I belong to the XXXXXX community which is recognized as a backward class by the Government of India for the purpose of reservation in services as per orders contained in Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 36012/22/93-Estt.(SCT), dated 8.9.1993. It is also declared that I have read and understood the instructions mentioned in the said DOPT’s Office Memorandum dated 08.09.1993, and OM No.36033/1/2013-Estt. (Res.) dated 13.09.2017 and I have reasons to declare that I do not fall under OBC(Creamy Layer) category on the basis of the income for the Financial Years(FYs) 2022-2023,2021-2022 and 2020-2021.”
In 2024, 13.4 lakh candidates appeared for the UPSC Preliminary examination, of which 14,627 qualified for the Mains Examination. Based on the results, 2,845 were shortlisted for the next phase, Personality Test (Interview-based). Of them, 1,056 candidates will join the civil services, based on current vacancies. The various quotas in UPSC reservation include Schedule Caste 15%, Schedule Tribes 7.5%, Other Backward Classes 25%, Economically Weaker Section 10%, and Persons with Benchmark Disabilities 4%.