Union Public Service Commission

The Union Public Service Commission is the constitutional body, provided for by Article 315(1) of the Constitution of India, that conducts the examinations for appointment to the services of the Union and advises the Government of India on methods of recruitment, on promotions and transfers, and on disciplinary matters affecting civil servants. It consisted of a Chairman and eight members as on 15 May 2025, and its expenses are charged on the Consolidated Fund of India under Article 322.

Its constitutional position is what separates it from every other recruiting agency in the Union. The Staff Selection Commission exists by a Government of India resolution and can be rearranged by another one. The UPSC cannot: its members are appointed by the President, hold office for a fixed term, can be removed for misbehaviour only on a report of the Supreme Court, are barred from further government employment afterwards, and are paid out of a fund that Parliament does not vote on. Each of those protections is written into a separate article of Part XIV, and together they are the whole design.

The practical reach of the Commission is wider than the Civil Services Examination it is known for. Article 320(3) makes it the body the government must consult before it settles how a post will be filled, before it promotes an officer by selection into or within Group A, before the President imposes or modifies certain penalties in a disciplinary case, and before certain claims for legal costs or injury pension are met. Every one of those duties is then cut back by the Union Public Service Commission (Exemption from Consultation) Regulations, 1958, and the article a reader needs is mostly the shape of those exemptions.

This page covers the constitutional framework in Articles 315 to 323, the composition as the Commission publishes it, the pay of the Chairman and members and the deduction that applies to a re-employed pensioner, the consultation regime and its exemptions, the examinations, the workload recorded in the last annual report the Commission published, and the history from 1926.

Constitutional basis: Articles 315 to 323

The UPSC is created by Article 315(1), which provides that there shall be a Public Service Commission for the Union and a Public Service Commission for each State. The name “Union Public Service Commission” comes from that article. Nine articles in Part XIV then build the institution, and they are best read as answers to a single question: how do you make a recruiting body that the government of the day cannot lean on?

Appointment and composition

Article 316(1) provides that the Chairman and the other members of the Union Commission are appointed by the President, and of a State Commission by the Governor. The Constitution fixes no strength. The proviso to Article 316(1) imposes one qualification on the membership as a whole: as nearly as may be one-half of the members of every Public Service Commission must be persons who at the dates of their respective appointments have held office for at least ten years under the Government of India or under the Government of a State. Two details in that proviso are regularly dropped. The ten years is measured at the date of appointment, not at any later point, and pre-Constitution service under the Crown in India or under the Government of an Indian State counts towards it.

The number of members is fixed by the President under Article 318(a), which empowers the President to make regulations determining the number of members of the Commission and their conditions of service. Salary-calculator.in was unable to reach the notification fixing the current ceiling, and no figure for a sanctioned strength is stated on this page for that reason. What the Commission publishes is a head count, not a ceiling.

Article 316(1A), inserted by section 11 of the Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Act 1963 with effect from 5 October 1963, covers the gap. Where the office of Chairman falls vacant, or the Chairman is unable to perform the duties of the office through absence or any other reason, those duties are performed by one of the other members whom the President appoints for the purpose, until a person appointed under clause (1) enters on the duties or the Chairman resumes them.

Term, retirement age and the two limbs

Article 316(2) gives a member of the Union Commission a term of six years from the date on which he enters upon office, or until he attains the age of 65, whichever is earlier. For a State Commission or a Joint Commission the age limb is 62, a figure substituted for “sixty years” by section 2 of the Constitution (Forty-first Amendment) Act 1976 with effect from 7 September 1976. A member may resign at any time by writing under his hand addressed to the President, under proviso (a) to Article 316(2).

Whether a member serves the full six years is therefore settled by the age at appointment, and the Commission’s own composition page carries examples of both outcomes. Dr. Ajay Kumar, born 2 October 1962, took office as Chairman on 15 May 2025 and is shown as retiring on 1 October 2027, the day before his sixty-fifth birthday: the age limb binds and the term runs about two years and five months. Ms. Suman Sharma, born 30 July 1967, took office as a member on 25 May 2023 and is shown as retiring on 24 May 2029, exactly six years later: the term limb binds. The same two-limb structure governs the Comptroller and Auditor General under Article 148 and the Chief Election Commissioner, which is why all three offices appear together in any table of retirement ages in central government service.

Article 316(3) provides that a person who holds office as a member is, on the expiration of his term, ineligible for re-appointment to that office. It is a bar on repeating the same office, not the wider employment bar, which is Article 319.

Removal, suspension and deemed misbehaviour

Article 317 puts removal beyond the executive, then makes three narrow exceptions to its own rule.

Under Article 317(1), and subject to clause (3), the Chairman or any other member may only be removed from office by order of the President on the ground of misbehaviour, and only after the Supreme Court, on a reference made to it by the President, has held an inquiry in accordance with the procedure prescribed under Article 145 and reported that the member ought on that ground to be removed. The Supreme Court’s finding is a precondition, not advice. Pending the report the President may, under Article 317(2), suspend the member from office.

Article 317(3) sits outside that machinery. The President may by order remove a Chairman or member who is adjudged an insolvent, who engages during his term of office in any paid employment outside the duties of his office, or who is in the opinion of the President unfit to continue in office by reason of infirmity of mind or body. No reference to the Supreme Court is required in any of the three cases, and the third is stated as a matter of the President’s opinion.

Article 317(4) supplies a definition that would otherwise be argued about. If a member is in any way concerned or interested in any contract or agreement made by or on behalf of the Government of India or the Government of a State, or participates in any way in the profit of such a contract or agreement or in any benefit or emolument arising from it otherwise than as a member and in common with the other members of an incorporated company, he is deemed to be guilty of misbehaviour for the purposes of clause (1).

The bar on further employment

Article 319 closes the exit. A Chairman of the UPSC, on ceasing to hold office, is ineligible for further employment either under the Government of India or under the Government of a State, with no exception at all. The graded scheme for everyone else runs as follows: a State Public Service Commission Chairman may afterwards be appointed Chairman or a member of the UPSC, or Chairman of another State Commission, and nothing else; a UPSC member other than the Chairman may afterwards be appointed Chairman of the UPSC or Chairman of a State Commission, and nothing else; a State Commission member other than the Chairman may afterwards be appointed Chairman or a member of the UPSC, or Chairman or a member of another State Commission, and nothing else.

The design is visible in the asymmetry. Every route in Article 319 leads upward into another Public Service Commission, and none leads back into the executive the office-holder was scrutinising.

Financial independence and the annual report

Article 322 charges the expenses of the Union Commission, “including any salaries, allowances and pensions payable to or in respect of the members or staff of the Commission”, on the Consolidated Fund of India. Charged expenditure is not submitted to the vote of Parliament, so the Commission’s budget cannot be reduced on the floor of the House. This is also why the UPSC carries no provision in the demand for grants of the Department of Personnel and Training, while the Staff Selection Commission, an attached office of that department, does.

Article 323(1) requires the Commission to present annually to the President a report of the work done, and requires the President to cause a copy of it to be laid before each House of Parliament together with a memorandum explaining, as respects the cases where the advice of the Commission was not accepted, the reasons for that non-acceptance. The corresponding provision for a State or Joint Commission, requiring the report to be laid before the State Legislature, is Article 323(2), and it does not apply to the Union.

Article 321 adds a power that is rarely used but worth knowing: an Act of Parliament or of a State Legislature may provide for the exercise of additional functions by the UPSC or a State Commission, including as respects the services of any local authority, body corporate constituted by law, or public institution.

The Commission as it stands

The Commission publishes its own composition, and the page consulted for this article carries the date 15 May 2025. Every entry below is as at that date, which is the Commission’s most recent published statement of its membership.

Source: UPSC, “The Commission”, page stamped as on 15 May 2025. Nine office-holders in all.

Below the Commission sits a secretariat. The UPSC Annual Report 2016-17 records that it is headed by a Secretary of the rank of Additional Secretary to the Government of India, that the service conditions of its staff are regulated by the UPSC (Staff) Regulations, 1958, and that its sanctioned strength as on 31 March 2017 was 1,899. An Additional Secretary in the secretariat, of the rank of Joint Secretary to the Government of India, is nominated as Financial Adviser, supported by a Finance and Budget Officer of the rank of Under Secretary. The same report records that the Chairman is vested with all the administrative and financial powers of the Commission and is also the Head of the Department.

Pay of the Chairman and members

The pay of a UPSC Chairman is not a cell in the pay matrix and is not stated as a rupee figure in the instrument that governs it. The service conditions of the Chairman and members are regulated by the Union Public Service Commission (Members) Regulations, 1969, made under Article 318(a), and the Commission’s own annual report names those Regulations as the governing instrument.

The pegging chain

Regulation 4 of the 1969 Regulations, as substituted by the Union Public Service Commission (Members) Amendment Regulations, 2007, notified by the Department of Personnel and Training on 28 June 2007 and deemed to have come into force on 1 May 2007, reads in full: “There shall be paid to the Chairman a salary which is equal to the salary of the Chief Election Commissioner and to the other Members a salary which is equal to the salary of an Election Commissioner.”

That is a peg, not an amount, and following it produces a result the usual summaries get wrong. Section 10(1) of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act 2023, published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary on 28 December 2023, pays the Chief Election Commissioner and the other Election Commissioners a salary equal to that of a Judge of the Supreme Court. The two offices are on the same figure. Feeding that back through regulation 4, the UPSC Chairman and a UPSC member draw the same salary as each other, which is Rs. 2,50,000 a month, the salary of a Judge of the Supreme Court under the High Court and Supreme Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Amendment Act, 2018.

Any statement that a UPSC member draws Rs. 2,25,000 against the Chairman’s Rs. 2,50,000 is reading across from the wrong table. Rs. 2,25,000 is the salary of a Judge of a High Court under the 2018 Amendment Act, and it is also the Level 17 figure for a Secretary to the Government of India under the CCS (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016. Neither instrument reaches the UPSC, because regulation 4 points at the Election Commission and nowhere else. The comparison table on Cabinet Secretary pay sets those figures side by side.

Dearness allowance follows the same chain and not the ordinary one. Section 10(3) of the CEC Act 2023 entitles the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners to such dearness allowance as is admissible to a Judge of the Supreme Court. A UPSC Chairman is therefore not on the dearness allowance rate that a Department of Expenditure office memorandum sets for serving central government employees, and applying the current central DA percentage to the Rs. 2,50,000 figure produces a number with no instrument behind it.

Two limits on the above are worth stating plainly. The copy of regulation 4 consulted for this article is the 2007 substitution as published by the Commission, and salary-calculator.in was unable to reach a primary consolidated text showing whether it has been amended since. And the Regulations were drafted against the Election Commission (Conditions of Service of Election Commissioners and Transaction of Business) Act 1991, which section 21(1) of the 2023 Act repealed outright, so regulations 8 and 10 of the 1969 Regulations now cite an Act that no longer exists.

The deduction for a re-employed pensioner

Most people appointed to the Commission are retired government servants already drawing a pension, and the proviso to regulation 4 deals with them. Where a person, immediately before assuming office as Chairman or member, was in receipt of a pension, or being eligible to do so had elected to draw one, in respect of previous service under the Union or a State, the salary for the service as Chairman or member is reduced by the amount of that pension. Where the person had, before assuming office, received the commuted value of a portion of that pension, the salary is reduced by the amount of that portion as well.

The second limb is the one that catches people out. Commutation converts part of a pension into a lump sum and reduces the monthly pension accordingly, and it might be expected that only the reduced monthly figure comes off the salary. It does not work that way: the commuted portion is added back for the purpose of the deduction, so the full pre-commutation pension is what reduces the salary. Only a disability or wound pension is carved out, and the carve-out is express.

This is not a UPSC peculiarity. Section 10(2) of the CEC Act 2023 carries the same two-limb deduction word for word, and Section 3 of the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971 applies the same rule to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The pattern across these constitutional and statutory offices is consistent: the salary is a full salary on its face and a top-up in the hand. It is a stricter rule than the one applied to an ordinary re-employed pensioner under the Central Civil Services (Fixation of Pay of Re-employed Pensioners) Orders, 1986, where the pension is ignored in some cases and only partly adjusted in others.

Pension, provident fund, leave and perquisites

The 2007 notification substituted four more regulations, and together they describe an office that continues a government career instead of interrupting it.

Regulation 8, on pension, provides that a person who was in government service immediately before assuming office is deemed to have retired from that service on the date he enters upon office, while the subsequent service as Chairman or member is reckoned as continuing approved service counting for pension in the service to which he belonged. On demission he is entitled to a pension for the period served plus such pension, family pension and gratuity as are admissible to the Chief Election Commissioner or an Election Commissioner. Regulation 8(3) then defines demission narrowly: except where office is demitted by resignation, a person is treated as having demitted office if and only if he has completed his term of office, has attained the age of 65, or his demission is medically certified as necessitated by ill health. Because regulation 8 reaches the pension outcome by naming the repealed 1991 Act, the quantum it delivers today is a question this page states rather than answers.

Regulation 9 entitles every person holding office as Chairman or member to subscribe to the General Provident Fund (Central Services), the same fund a serving officer subscribes to under the GPF rules.

Regulation 10, on other conditions of service, carries travelling allowance, rent-free residence, exemption from payment of income-tax on the value of that rent-free residence, conveyance facilities, sumptuary allowance, medical facilities and post-retirement benefits across from what applies to the Chief Election Commissioner or an Election Commissioner. The income-tax exemption on the value of the rent-free residence is stated in the regulation itself, which makes it one of the few places where the tax treatment of government accommodation is settled by the instrument creating the office instead of by the tax statute.

Regulation 6, on leave, splits by background. A person who was in government service immediately before assuming office may be granted leave under the rules applicable to his former service and carries forward the leave standing at his credit; anyone else gets leave under the rules applicable to a member of the Indian Administrative Service. The power to grant, refuse, revoke or curtail leave vests in the President.

What the Commission does: the functions under Article 320

Article 320(1) states the duty in one line: it is the duty of the Union and State Public Service Commissions to conduct examinations for appointments to the services of the Union and the services of the State respectively. Article 320(2) adds a duty owed to the States, that the Union Commission shall, if requested by any two or more States so to do, assist those States in framing and operating schemes of joint recruitment for any services for which candidates possessing special qualifications are required.

Article 320(3) is the advisory duty, and it is where the Commission touches the career of an individual civil servant. The Union Public Service Commission shall be consulted under five heads:

1. On all matters relating to methods of recruitment to civil services and for civil posts. This is the hook for the Commission’s role in framing and revising recruitment rules, the post-specific rules that fix the method, qualifications and age limits for every civil post.
2. On the principles to be followed in making appointments to civil services and posts and in making promotions and transfers from one service to another, and on the suitability of candidates for such appointments, promotions or transfers. This is the hook for the association of the Commission with a departmental promotion committee.
3. On all disciplinary matters affecting a person serving under the Government of India or the Government of a State in a civil capacity, including memorials or petitions relating to such matters. This carries both the disciplinary consultation and the constitutional footing of the memorial to the President.
4. On any claim that the costs incurred by a civil servant in defending legal proceedings instituted against him in respect of acts done or purporting to be done in the execution of his duty should be paid out of the Consolidated Fund of India.
5. On any claim for the award of a pension in respect of injuries sustained by a person while serving in a civil capacity, and any question as to the amount of any such award.

The clause closes with a residual limb, a duty to advise on any matter so referred and on any other matter which the President may refer to the Commission.

Article 320(4) takes two subjects out of clause (3) altogether. Nothing in clause (3) requires a Public Service Commission to be consulted as respects the manner in which any provision referred to in Article 16(4) may be made, or as respects the manner in which effect may be given to the provisions of Article 335. Those are reservation in appointments, and the claims of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes to consideration in the making of appointments. Reservation in central government jobs is therefore a matter on which the Commission has no advisory role by constitutional design.

When consultation is required, and when it is not

The proviso to Article 320(3) lets the President make regulations specifying the matters in which, either generally or in any particular class of case or in any particular circumstances, it shall not be necessary for a Public Service Commission to be consulted. Article 320(5) then puts those regulations before Parliament: they are to be laid for not less than fourteen days before each House as soon as possible after they are made, and are subject to such modifications, by way of repeal or amendment, as both Houses may make during the session in which they are so laid.

The regulations made under that proviso are the Union Public Service Commission (Exemption from Consultation) Regulations, 1958, No. 18/4/51-Estt.(B), issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 1 September 1958 in supersession of all previous regulations on the subject. In practice they, and not Article 320(3), decide when a file goes to the Commission. The copy consulted for this article records amendments running from 1961 to 1991, the latest being G.S.R. 666 dated 30 November 1991; salary-calculator.in could not reach an official consolidated text showing whether anything has changed since.

Source: UPSC (Exemption from Consultation) Regulations, 1958, as recorded in the copy consulted, with amendments to 1991.

Regulation 3 exempts the selection for appointment of an officer already inside the relevant service: to an All India Service post, of an officer already a member of an All India Service; to a Central Service Group A post, of an officer in the Armed Forces or already a member of an All India Service or a Central Service Group A; to a Central Service Group B post, of an officer already in a Central Service Group B or Group C or in the Armed Forces; and to a tenure post in Central Service Group A or B, of an officer of a State Service. The definitions clause provides that Central Service Group A, B and C include the corresponding Railway Services and Defence Services (Civilian), and that a tenure post means a post classified as such in consultation with the Commission.

Regulation 4 exempts a temporary or officiating appointment where the person is not likely to hold the post for more than a year and an immediate appointment is necessary in the public interest because a reference would cause undue delay. Three conditions are attached, and they are the part that gets forgotten: the appointment must be reported to the Commission as soon as it is made; if it continues beyond six months a fresh estimate of its likely duration must be made and reported; and if that estimate shows more than one year from the date of appointment, the Commission must immediately be consulted.

The disciplinary exemption in regulation 5

Regulation 5(1) is drafted as an exemption with carve-backs, and it reads more clearly turned around. Consultation in a disciplinary case is retained only where the order is an order of the President, and only in these four situations: an original order imposing one of the specified penalties; an order on appeal against such a penalty imposed by a subordinate authority; an order over-ruling or modifying such a penalty, after consideration of a petition or memorial or otherwise; and an order imposing such a penalty in exercise of the power of review, in modification of an order under which no such penalty was imposed. The penalties enumerated include recovery from pay of pecuniary loss caused by negligence or breach of orders, reduction to a lower stage in the time scale of pay for a specified period, and reduction to a lower time scale, grade, post or service, all of them penalties in the Rule 11 list of the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965.

The third of those four is the one that shapes appeal, review and revision practice. Because an order over-ruling or modifying a penalty attracts consultation, an appellate or revising authority acting in the President’s name cannot cancel a subordinate authority’s penalty first and issue a show cause notice afterwards without triggering it, a point the Ministry of Home Affairs made in Office Memorandum No. 39/2/68-Ests.(A) dated 14 May 1968.

Regulation 5(2) removes consultation entirely in two situations. No consultation is required on any disciplinary matter affecting a person belonging to a Defence Service (Civilian). And none is required where the President proposes to dismiss, remove or reduce in rank a person after being satisfied that such action is necessary in the interest of the security of the State, or proposes an order under rule 3 of the General Civil Services (Safeguarding of National Security) Rules 1953 or rule 3 of the Railway Services (Safeguarding of National Security) Rules 1954 as amended in 1960. The first limb runs parallel to the security-of-the-State proviso to Article 311(2).

Regulation 5A exempts the legal-costs limb in Article 320(3)(d) for a person in Central Service Group C or Group D, and in any other case where the government has accepted the claim. Regulation 6 exempts the injury-pension limb in Article 320(3)(e) for a person in Central Service Group C or Group D, and for a person in an All India Service or Central Service Group A or B so far as the claim arises out of injuries sustained during the operation of the proclamation of emergency issued on 26 October 1962 under Article 352(1).

Schedule I item 10 and the boundary with the SSC

Schedule I to the 1958 Regulations lists the services and posts exempted by regulation 2 from both limbs of Article 320(3)(a) and (b). Its heads include posts where the Constitution confers the power of appointment on the President; the posts of Chairman or member of a statutory Board, Tribunal or Commission; the posts of Chairman or member of a body appointed by resolution of either House of Parliament or of Government for an investigation, inquiry or advice; the heads of diplomatic, consular and similar Indian missions abroad; personal staff attached to those office-holders; all technical and administrative posts in or under the Atomic Energy Commission; judicial posts in the Union Territories; Group B non-gazetted posts of Assistants and Stenographers Grade C filled by open competitive examination; posts in the secretariat and personal staff of the President and Vice President; and the posts in the Government Hospitality Organisation.

Item 10 is the one that matters most to a reader, and it is one line: all Group C and Group D services and posts, save as otherwise expressly provided in the relevant recruitment rules or orders. That is the regulatory reason the UPSC has no part in the recruitment of a clerk, a constable or a multi-tasking staff member, and the reason the Staff Selection Commission exists to do it. The division between the two bodies is often explained as a matter of Group A against Group C, which is the effect but not the source; the source is regulation 2 read with Schedule I item 10.

Is the advice binding?

It is not, and the demonstration is structural rather than textual. No article of the Constitution says that the advice of the Commission does not bind the government. What Article 320(3) does is impose a duty to consult and a corresponding duty on the Commission to advise. What Article 323(1) then does is require the President to lay the Commission’s annual report before each House of Parliament together with a memorandum explaining the reasons in those cases where the advice of the Commission was not accepted.

A memorandum explaining non-acceptance presupposes that non-acceptance is lawful. The constitutional check on departing from the advice is disclosure to Parliament, not invalidity. This is the same design the Constitution uses for a departmental promotion committee recommendation and for several other advisory bodies in the service structure: the process is compulsory, the outcome is not.

The consequence for a civil servant is worth stating plainly. Where the Commission’s advice is material to a disciplinary order, the advice must be supplied to the servant before the order is passed, which the Supreme Court held in Union of India v. S. K. Kapoor, (2011) 4 SCC 589, and which G.S.R. 769(E) dated 31 October 2014 wrote into the CCS (CCA) Rules. Failure to supply it is a recurring ground of challenge before the Central Administrative Tribunal.

The examinations

The Commission publishes a Programme of Examinations and Recruitment Tests for each calendar year. The 2026 programme carries 27 serials, ten of which are blank placeholders reserved for examinations or recruitment tests not yet scheduled. The named examinations are below, with the dates the programme gives.

Source: UPSC, Programme of Examinations and Recruitment Tests 2026. The programme carries its own qualification, quoted exactly: “The dates of notification, commencement and duration of Examinations/ RTs are liable to alteration, if the circumstances so warrant.” A Main examination has no separate notification because it is notified through its Preliminary. The Civil Services row shows that the qualification is real: Examination Notice No. 05/2026-CSE issued on 4 February 2026, not 14 January 2026, and applications closed at 6:00 PM on 24 February 2026, not on 3 February 2026.

Three points about the list repay attention. The Indian Forest Service is notified and screened through the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination and shares its serial, but has a Main examination of its own in November, so it is neither a separate examination end to end nor a part of the Civil Services Examination. The National Defence Academy and Naval Academy Examination and the Combined Defence Services Examination are conducted by the UPSC on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, with the subsequent stage conducted by the Services Selection Boards of that ministry, which is why the Commission’s recommendation figures for those examinations cover candidates selected by the UPSC as well as by the Services Selection Boards. And three of the fifteen are limited departmental competitive examinations, for the Deputy Superintendent of Police grade in the Central Bureau of Investigation, for Assistant Commandant (Executive) in the Central Industrial Security Force, and for the Section Officer and Stenographer grades of the Central Secretariat Service, where the Commission conducts an examination for candidates who are already government servants.

The eligibility conditions for the flagship examination are published in a single notice each year. Under Examination Notice No. 05/2026-CSE dated 4 February 2026, a candidate for the Civil Services Examination must have attained 21 years and must not have attained 32 years as on 1 August 2026, about 933 vacancies were advertised, and the notice permits six attempts to a General candidate, nine to an Other Backward Classes candidate and an unlimited number to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe candidate.

Recruitment other than by open examination

An open competitive examination is the most visible route into the services the Commission recruits for, and it is not the only one the Commission is involved in.

Promotion into and within Group A. Article 320(3)(b) brings the suitability of candidates for promotion within the Commission’s advisory remit, and the 1958 Regulations decide when it is exercised. The Commission need not be associated with a departmental promotion committee promoting a serving Group A officer by selection to a Group A post below Pay Level 12, and must be associated with every promotion from Group B to any level in Group A. That boundary is worked by regulation 2 and regulation 2A read with Schedules I and II.

Promotion into the All India Services. Rule 8(1) of the Indian Administrative Service (Recruitment) Rules, 1954 provides for the promotion of a substantive member of a State Civil Service on the recommendation of the State Government, in consultation with the Commission and in accordance with the Indian Administrative Service (Appointment by Promotion) Regulations, 1955. Rule 9(1) caps the number so recruited at one-third of the senior posts and the several reserves for the cadre. The All India Services page covers the cadre structure this feeds.

Limited departmental competitive examinations. Rule 12(1)(a) of the Central Secretariat Service Rules, 2009 fills the Section Officer grade half by a limited departmental competitive examination conducted by the Commission and half from the Select List, which runs on seniority. This is the route by which an Assistant Section Officer reaches Level 8 without waiting for a seniority vacancy.

Recruitment rules. Article 320(3)(a) makes the Commission the body consulted on the method of recruitment itself, so a department framing or amending the recruitment rules for a post within the Commission’s remit refers the draft to it. The Commission’s annual report records this as a distinct workload stream, and it is the least visible of its functions to a candidate.

Workload: the last published annual report

The Commission’s most recent annual report available on its website is the 67th, for 2016-17. Every figure in this section is from that report, and every one of them is nine years old; none is a current figure.

Source: UPSC Annual Report 2016-17 (67th), tables as named.

For the Civil Services Examination specifically, the Preliminary Examination of 2016 drew 11,28,262 applicants of whom 4,59,659 actually appeared, a turnout of about two in five. The completed cycle in the report is the Civil Services (Main) Examination 2015, at Appendix-5: 1,164 posts, 2,792 candidates interviewed and 1,078 recommended.

One caution about the recommendation counts, which this page records as its own finding; the report does not draw attention to it. Table-1 records 4,612 candidates recommended on the examination side for 2016-17, while Appendix-4 totals 2,445 recommended across the examinations conducted in the year. The two figures are not reconcilable on the face of the report: the Table-1 footnote states that its count covers candidates selected by the UPSC as well as by the Services Selection Boards for the National Defence Academy and Combined Defence Services examinations, and Appendix-4 leaves the recommendation columns blank for examinations that had not been finalised within the year. A figure taken from this report should carry the name of the table it came from. The Total column of Table-1 has a separate trap: it reads 5,859, which is the sum of the 4,612 recommendations, the 1,123 recruitment-side recommendations and the 124 cases in which none was found suitable, so it is not a recommendation total despite sitting under a recommendation heading.

History: 1926 to 1950

The Commission’s origin is traced, in its own account, to the First Dispatch of the Government of India on Indian Constitutional Reforms of 5 March 1919, which referred to the need for a permanent office charged with the regulation of service matters. Section 96C of the Government of India Act 1919 then provided for the establishment in India of a Public Service Commission which should “discharge, in regard to recruitment and control of the Public Services in India, such functions as may be assigned thereto by rules made by the Secretary of State in Council”.

Nothing happened for seven years. The matter went to the Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services in India, the Lee Commission, whose report of 27 March 1924 recommended that the statutory Public Service Commission contemplated by the 1919 Act be established without delay. The first Public Service Commission was constituted on 1 October 1926, consisting of four members besides the Chairman, appointed by the Secretary of State in Council. Its first Chairman was Sir Ross Barker, a member of the Home Civil Service of the United Kingdom, who held the post from October 1926 to August 1932. The functions were not in the 1919 Act at all: they were regulated by the Public Service Commission (Functions) Rules 1926, framed under sub-section (2) of section 96C.

The federal structure arrived through a White Paper of December 1931 and the report of the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reforms of 1934, and took concrete form in sections 264 to 268 of the Government of India Act 1935, which provided for a Public Service Commission for the Federation and a Provincial Public Service Commission for each Province or group of Provinces. Those sections were brought into force on 1 April 1937, and the body became the Federal Public Service Commission.

On the commencement of the Constitution on 26 January 1950 the Federal Public Service Commission acquired constitutional status and the name Union Public Service Commission, which comes from Article 315(1) itself. The provision that carried the people across is Article 378(1), a transitional article: the members of the Public Service Commission for the Dominion of India holding office immediately before the commencement became, unless they elected otherwise, members of the Public Service Commission for the Union, holding office until the expiration of their term as determined under the pre-commencement rules, notwithstanding Article 316(1) and (2) but subject to the proviso to Article 316(2). Article 378(1) renames nothing, and a page that credits it with the change of name is wrong on a point a reader can check in one click.

Common misconceptions

That the UPSC decides who gets the job. In an open competitive examination it recommends candidates, and the appointing authority appoints. In a promotion or disciplinary case it advises, and the government may depart from the advice, subject only to explaining itself to Parliament under Article 323(1).

That the Chairman is the senior-most civil servant. The Chairman is not a civil servant at all while in office. Article 319(a) bars a former UPSC Chairman from any further employment under the Union or a State, a bar the Cabinet Secretary does not carry.

That a UPSC member draws less than the Chairman. Regulation 4 pegs the Chairman to the Chief Election Commissioner and a member to an Election Commissioner, and section 10(1) of the CEC Act 2023 puts those two on the same salary. There is no differential.

That the Commission is under the Department of Personnel and Training. DoPT is the department through which the government deals with the Commission. The Commission is established under Article 315, and its expenses are charged on the Consolidated Fund under Article 322, so it carries no provision in the department’s demand for grants.

That the UPSC runs Group C recruitment for some departments. It does not, because item 10 of Schedule I to the 1958 Regulations exempts all Group C and Group D posts, unless the recruitment rules for a particular post expressly provide otherwise.

That reservation policy goes to the Commission for advice. Article 320(4) removes both the manner of making a provision under Article 16(4) and the manner of giving effect to Article 335 from the consultation duty altogether.

Related Articles

• Staff Selection Commission
• Central government jobs
• Civil Services Examination
• All India Services
• Indian Administrative Service salary
• Indian Police Service salary
• Indian Revenue Service
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Recruitment rules
• Direct recruitment
• Departmental promotion committee
• Annual Performance Appraisal Report
• Seniority in central government service
• Probation in central government service
• All India Services probation
• All India Services (Conduct) Rules
• CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965
• Departmental inquiry
• Appeal, review and revision under the CCS (CCA) Rules
• Charge sheet and articles of charge
• Dismissal and removal from service
• Compulsory retirement
• Memorial to the President
• Article 311 of the Constitution
• Article 309 of the Constitution
• Article 312 of the Constitution
• Central Administrative Tribunal
• Central Vigilance Commission
• Central Bureau of Investigation
• Central Armed Police Forces
• Central Secretariat Service
• Assistant Section Officer salary
• Cabinet Secretary
• Cabinet Secretary pay
• Comptroller and Auditor General
• Appointments Committee of the Cabinet
• Civil Services Board
• Pay matrix
• Salary by pay level
• Dearness allowance
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• Commutation of pension
• Pay fixation on re-employment
• General Provident Fund
• Perquisites and their taxation
• Retirement age in central government service
• Withholding of pension
• CCS (Pension) Rules, 2021
• Fundamental Rules
• Honorarium
• Reservation in central government jobs
• Indian Forest Service
• Indian Foreign Service
• Promotion

External references

• Union Public Service Commission
• The Commission: composition
• UPSC (Members) Amendment Regulations, 2007
• UPSC Annual Report 2016-17
• Programme of Examinations and Recruitment Tests 2026
• The Constitution of India, as on 1 May 2024
• Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners Act 2023

References

1. Constitution of India, Articles 315 to 323, as on 1 May 2024 (Ministry of Law and Justice, Legislative Department, sixth pocket-size diglot edition), for the establishment, composition, tenure, removal, employment bar, functions, charge on the Consolidated Fund and annual report.
2. Constitution (Fifteenth Amendment) Act 1963, section 11, in force 5 October 1963 (insertion of Article 316(1A)); Constitution (Forty-first Amendment) Act 1976, section 2, in force 7 September 1976 (State Commission age limb raised to 62).
3. Union Public Service Commission (Members) Regulations, 1969, regulations 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 as substituted by the Union Public Service Commission (Members) Amendment Regulations, 2007, Department of Personnel and Training notification dated 28 June 2007, Gazette of India Extraordinary Part II Section 3 Sub-section (i), deemed in force from 1 May 2007.
4. Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act 2023, sections 10(1), 10(2), 10(3) and 21(1), Gazette of India Extraordinary Part II Section 1 No. 57 dated 28 December 2023.
5. High Court and Supreme Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Amendment Act, 2018, for the salary of a Judge of the Supreme Court.
6. Union Public Service Commission (Exemption from Consultation) Regulations, 1958, No. 18/4/51-Estt.(B), Ministry of Home Affairs, dated 1 September 1958, regulations 2, 2A, 3, 4, 5, 5A and 6 with Schedule I, as recorded in the copy consulted with amendments to G.S.R. 666 dated 30 November 1991.
7. Union Public Service Commission, 67th Annual Report 2016-17, Chapter 2 Tables 1 to 4, Chapter on Administration, Training and Finance, and Appendices 4, 5 and 37.
8. Union Public Service Commission, Programme of Examinations and Recruitment Tests 2026.
9. Union Public Service Commission, Examination Notice No. 05/2026-CSE dated 4 February 2026, for the age limits, vacancies and attempts at the Civil Services Examination.
10. Indian Administrative Service (Recruitment) Rules, 1954, rules 8(1) and 9(1), read with the Indian Administrative Service (Appointment by Promotion) Regulations, 1955.
11. Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971, Section 3, for the parallel salary peg and pension deduction.
12. Union of India v. S. K. Kapoor, (2011) 4 SCC 589, on supply of the Commission’s advice to the government servant.