CIVIL services exam topper Aditya Srivastava scored 54.27 per cent in the prestigious exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), according to the detailed marks of the recommended candidates released by the Commission on Friday. Following closely behind is Animesh Pradhan, who scored 52.69 per cent in the Civil Services Exam 2023. As many as 1,016 candidates -- 664 men and 352 women -- have qualified in the examination, results of which were announced on Tuesday. The civil services examination is conducted annually by the UPSC in three stages -- preliminary, main and personality test (or interview) -- to select officers for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS), among others.

 

The preliminary examination consists of two objective type (multiple choice) question papers of 400 marks. This stage is meant to serve as a screening test only, and the marks obtained in it by the candidates, who are declared qualified for admission to the main examination, are not counted for determining their final order of merit. The merit is determined out of the total of 2,025 marks -- written or main exam is of 1,750 marks and the interview is of 275. Srivastava (27) got a total of 1,099 marks -- 899 in the written and 200 in the personality test, according to the marks of recommended candidates disclosed by the UPSC. A trainee Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, he hails from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. Srivastava completed his BTech in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and also possesses an MTech degree. He had electrical engineering as his optional subject in the civil services exam. Pradhan (24), resident of Talcher town in Odisha’s Angul district, scored 1,067 marks -- 892 in written and 175 in interview -- and secured the second rank. He had chosen sociology as his optional subject in the exam. Pradhan completed his BTech in computer science from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela and is currently an employee of the Indian Oil Corporation’s (IOC) refineries division here. Third rank holder Donuru Ananya Reddy, got 1,065 marks (52.59 per cent).