'Blatant errors, 3 questions being dropped': Educators, aspirants flag mistakes in UPSC CPSE 2024 Prelims answer key

The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) released the answer keys for the Civil Services Examination (CSE) preliminary exam for the 2024 exams on Wednesday. The UPSC, however, is facing the ire of educators and aspirants over alleged errors in the answer key for UPSC CSE 2024 Prelims.

Among the issues flagged were ambiguity/incorrectness in the answer key, and aspirants getting negative scores despite giving the correct answers. One such example is "With reference to Union Budget, consider the following statements: 1. The Union Finance Minister on behalf of the Prime Minister lays the Annual Financial Statement before both the Houses of Parliament. 2. At the Union level, no demand for a grant can be made except on the recommendation of the President of India. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) Both 1 and 2 (d) Neither 1 nor 2."

As per the answer key, the correct answer to this question is (c) Both 1 and 2. However, the correct answer to the question is (b) 2 only. The Finance Minister presents the budget on behalf of the President and not the Prime Minister, as the first statement suggests, which makes it incorrect.

An educator named Mudit Gupta claimed in a social media post that many students who marked the correct answer allegedly got negative scores.

Gupta wrote on X (formerly Twitter): "UPSC has destroyed career. It has become a mockery. Even the official answer keys are wrong. Many students who marked [the] correct answer got a negative score. Even ORN Coachings have better teachers and content writers than UPSC. SHAME!"

Another user questioned the UPSC for getting the answer to a basic question wrong in its answer key. The user also said that the government body needs to come up with an error-free answer key or eliminate ambiguous statements and questions which get dropped year after year.

"How can a constitutional body, UPSC, get this basic question wrong in its key answer released today? It is high time UPSC comes up with error-free key answers or ambiguous statements and questions which get dropped every year," the user commented.

An aspirant named Mansi Bindal flagged years of gruelling preparation and had some hard questions to ask of the UPSC over the ambiguity in its answer key.

"UPSC drops prelims answer key 3 days before prelims, full of blunders and discrepancies, & quietly deletes 3 questions like no one’s watching? What kind of joke is this? We break our backs preparing for years, and this is the transparency we get? Disgraceful," Bindal wrote.

A civil engineer named Uma Devi R expressed concerns that the number of students in the selected list who got this wrong could go beyond 75 per cent.

"After looking at the answer key we are perplexed !! The number of students in the selected list who have got this wrong would go beyond 75%. Such an easy and straightforward question," she wrote.

A user named Samar Sheoran said that, allegedly, there are blatant errors in the answer key even after 3 questions were dropped, while expressing concerns that some people will clear the cutoff by answering these questions wrongly.

"UPSC has just released its answer keys for CSP-2024. There are blatant errors even after 3 questions being dropped. There will be people who just cleared the cutoff based on answering these questions wrong; probably they have a rank as well and there are people who might have just missed the cutoff owing to answering these 3 or 2 questions correctly. This is a scam right in front of our eyes," Sheoran commented.