He Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Friday uploaded a revised notification for the Civil Services Examination 2026, after its earlier version drew criticism from aspirants and others over nearly 50 spelling and grammatical errors found in the document.
According to the UPSC calendar, the CSE 2026 notification was scheduled in the second week of January. However, major changes to the process, such as a new unique registration number system, one-time editable profiles and adjustments to frame allocation, caused a delay. The official notification finally came on February 4, announcing 933 vacancies, the preliminary ones on May 24 and the main ones starting on August 21, with the last date to fill the forms on February 24.
However, what was to be a routine official statement raised eyebrows after grammatical and spelling errors were detected in its English version. On page 2, words like “Exam” and “candidates” appear as “Exam” and “candidates,” respectively. Similar errors continue on page 7 with ‘Functinal’ and ‘Bechmark’, on page 8 with ‘Abbriviations’ and ‘Categoriesof’, and on page 9 with ‘CHHATISGARH’ and ‘KOLKATTA’.
Pages 17, 18, 20, 24, 27, 28, 30 and 38 also contained errors like ‘feebe’, ‘anoffer’, ‘ny’, ‘notbe’, ‘Meghalya’, ‘Maithili’, ‘heminaopia’, ‘draught’ (used instead of drought) and ‘foodgtrains’.
On page 39, liposoluble was ‘liposoluble’, hormones as ‘harmonies’ and pressure as ‘pressuer’. The errors continued with ‘life stocking’, ‘Pregnancy’, ‘post-moretem’, ‘poisoning’ and ‘pre-anesthetic’.
Applicants in Pune and across the country they expressed frustration at how the notification for such a prestigious exam could be such a flawed document. Shruti Velapure, a UPSC aspirant from Pune, said, “If aspirants are judged on their perfection, why not UPSC? We lose attempts, marks and even careers due to small mistakes. Seeing basic spelling errors in an official notification seems unfair and disappointing.”
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Another candidate, Akshada Surve, said: “The notification was already delayed and when it finally came, it had many errors. We planned months around this document. These errors create confusion and show a lack of seriousness.”
“We are constantly told that UPSC does not allow any margin of error. But when the commission itself overlooks basic spelling errors, different rules seem to apply. Aspirants expect accountability, not excuses,” added Shrikant Jare, a UPSC aspirant.
Another applicant observed that errors were inexplicable when spelling and grammar checking tools were readily available.
Lots of errors
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Here is a list of some words that were missing in the UPSC notification released on February 4:
* Plio-Pleistocene-Plio-preleistocene
* Context-context
* Anthropology-Anthropology
* Meaning-Significane
* Magnoliaceae-Mangnoliaceae
* Chemotaxonomy-chemotaxonomy
* Polyembryony-Polyembryony
*Cytoskeleton-Cytoskeleton
* Phloem-folem
* Phytoremediation-phytoremediation-diation
*Energy energy
*Mathematical-method
* Post mortem – post poretem
* Influence influences
*Field test presented
* Channel-channel
* Distribution-distribution
* Employees-Employees
* Economic-Economic
* Perception-Perception
* Superheterodyne-superhetrodyne
(Vaishnavi Gujar is an intern at The indian express)