The UPSC Recommended 958 Candidates From 9,37,876 Applicants in March 2026, and Only Three All India Services Answer to Both the Centre and the States

Three services in India are staffed by officers who belong to the Union and the states together: the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian Forest Service. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) recruits the IAS and the IPS through the Civil Services Examination, which also fills the Indian Foreign Service and other Union services, 23 services and posts in all in the 2026 notice. On 6 March 2026 the Press Information Bureau reported the result of the 2025 cycle: 9,37,876 candidates (about 9.4 lakh) had applied and 958 were recommended.

A word on the letters. The Indian Foreign Service is recruited through the same examination but is not an All India Service. The Indian Forest Service is one, and the Ministry of Personnel’s own backgrounder abbreviates it to IFS as well.

Article 312 lets the Rajya Sabha open the way for shared services

Article 312 sets the condition for creating such a service. The Rajya Sabha, the Council of States that represents the states, must first declare by a resolution, backed by at least two-thirds of the members present and voting, that it is necessary or expedient in the national interest. Parliament may then create “one or more all India services” common to the Union and the states by law, and regulate their recruitment and conditions of service. Clause (2) treats the IAS and the IPS, as they stood when the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950, as services already created.

Ambedkar explained the two-thirds rule to the Constituent Assembly on 8 September 1949. The draft article on recruitment, now Article 309, left each state free to recruit its own staff, he said, so a service shared with the Union takes away part of that autonomy, and the way to authorise it is the consent of the House that represents the states. P. S. Deshmukh supported an amendment by Brajeshwar Prasad to delete the condition. The Assembly rejected it and adopted the article that day.

On 10 October 1949, Sardar Patel spoke in the debate on safeguards for serving officers. He told members that without a good all-India service “you will not have a united India”, and that ministers should let their officers speak their minds freely.

Parliament passed the All India Services Act in 1951. The IAS (Cadre) Rules of 1954 were made under its section 3(1), “after consultation with the Governments of the States concerned”, as the Supreme Court’s judgment of 22 October 2021 quotes them.

Why the list stops at three

The Home Ministry’s report for 1966 to 1967 records that the Rajya Sabha adopted a resolution under Article 312(1) in December 1961 for new services in engineering, forestry and medicine, and that the Indian Forest Service was constituted from 1 July 1966, with selections done for fifteen state cadres. The medical and engineering services were still at the drafting stage in that report. The Ministry of Personnel’s backgrounder of 26 January 2022 says only the IAS, the IPS and the Indian Forest Service have been constituted.

The 42nd Amendment, in force from 3 January 1977, added an all-India judicial service to Article 312, limited to posts of district judge and above. None exists. In a Lok Sabha reply on 24 March 2023, the Law Ministry said a Committee of Secretaries approved a proposal in November 2012, that state governments and High Courts were divided on it, and that “there is no consensus” at present.

The UPSC’s members cannot be removed at the government’s pleasure

The body that runs the examination is older than the Constitution. A Public Service Commission was set up on 1 October 1926, following the constitutional reforms of 1919, with a chairman and four members, and Article 378 made its members the members of the UPSC on 26 January 1950.

Article 315 gives the Union and each state its own commission. The President appoints the UPSC’s members. A term lasts six years or until age 65, whichever comes first, and about half of the members must have held government office for at least ten years. Under Article 317, a member can be removed for misbehaviour only after the Supreme Court, on a reference from the President, reports that the member ought to go. The Chairman cannot take another government job afterwards (Article 319), and the commission’s expenses are charged on the Consolidated Fund of India (Article 322).

Article 320(3) requires the government to consult the commission on recruitment methods, on the principles for promotions and transfers, and on disciplinary cases against civil servants. Article 323 requires the commission to send the President an annual report, and the President must lay it before each House with a memorandum explaining every case where the government did not accept the commission’s advice.

Once appointed, an All India Services officer holds office during the pleasure of the President under Article 310, with a check in Article 311: no dismissal by an authority subordinate to the one that appointed the officer, and an inquiry with a chance to be heard. The exceptions are a criminal conviction, a case where an inquiry is not reasonably practicable (the reasons must be recorded in writing), and a case where the President or Governor finds an inquiry inexpedient for the security of the State.

One examination, three stages, and the 2025 numbers

The Civil Services Examination notice of 4 February 2026 sets out the stages.

The Preliminary examination, held on 24 May 2026, has two objective papers of 200 marks each. It is a screening test, and its marks do not count toward the final rank. General Studies Paper II is a qualifying paper with a 33 per cent cut-off. The notice says about twelve to thirteen times the number of vacancies are admitted to the next stage.

The Main examination has nine written papers. Two are qualifying, 300 marks each: one Indian language from the Eighth Schedule (the list of 22 languages, covered in this explainer) and English. Seven count toward merit at 250 marks each: an essay, four General Studies papers and two papers on an optional subject the candidate chooses. That makes 1,750 marks. About twice as many candidates as there are vacancies are called for the Personality Test, an interview worth 275 marks with no minimum. The total is 2,025.

A candidate must be 21 to 32 on 1 August 2026. A general candidate gets six attempts, an OBC candidate nine, and SC and ST candidates have no limit. For the IAS, IPS and Indian Foreign Service, the candidate must be a citizen of India.

The funnel for the 2025 cycle, from the Press Information Bureau: 9,37,876 applied, 5,76,793 sat the Preliminary on 25 May 2025, 14,161 qualified for the Main in August 2025, 2,736 reached the Personality Test and 958 (659 men and 299 women) were recommended on 6 March 2026. That is about one recommendation for every 600 people who sat the first paper, by our arithmetic.

The 2024 cycle shows how the places divide. The result of 22 April 2025 recommended 1,009 candidates against 1,129 vacancies: 180 in the IAS, 55 in the Indian Foreign Service, 147 in the IPS, 605 in Central Services Group A and 142 in Group B. The Forest Service is not on the Civil Services Examination’s list of services, and the UPSC’s June 2026 note treats the Indian Forest Service Examination as a separate examination. For 2026, the notice projected about 933 vacancies, and the Press Information Bureau’s note of 16 June 2026 says 1,016 were notified and 13,343 candidates were shortlisted for the Main.

How an officer gets to one state

After the interview, the commission ranks candidates, and the Government allots services by rank and by the preferences each candidate listed. Those who want the IAS or IPS also give a home cadre preference. A cadre is the set of posts of one state, or of a group of states, to which officers are posted. The Ministry’s table for 1 January 2025 lists 25, including joint cadres such as Assam-Meghalaya.

Rule 5(1) of the IAS (Cadre) Rules says the Centre allocates officers to cadres “in consultation with the State Government”. The 2021 Supreme Court judgment shows how it plays out. In the 2006 examination, five candidates from Kerala ranked 4, 6, 13, 17 and 20. Only the rank 4 candidate was allotted Kerala. The others went to Nagaland, Assam-Meghalaya, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The court recorded that the policy circular of 30 and 31 May 1985 reserved vacancies in each cadre for outsiders (candidates from other states) and insiders (candidates from the cadre’s own state) in a ratio of 2:1. The court held that the Union must balance the claims of all the states, and that this “is to be carried by the Union and not by one State or by the Courts”, so a candidate cannot demand a home cadre because it is short of officers. The policy has been revised since, and the 2026 notice refers only to the “extant Cadre Allocation Policy”.

Training begins at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie. The Foundation Course lasts 14 weeks and is attended by trainees of the All India Services, the Foreign Service and Group A services, more than 650 a year at current levels. The academy says All India Services trainees study the language of the state cadre they are allotted. Then comes a year, 52 weeks, of district training in that state, including independent charge of a block-level post and of a tehsildar’s office (a tehsildar is the revenue officer of a sub-district), each for four to eight weeks, and in some cases a spell as sub-divisional magistrate. After the academy’s second phase comes a three-month Assistant Secretary posting in a Union ministry, a programme begun in 2015.

The Ministry’s description of the job in a district covers revenue collection, acting as a court in revenue matters, law and order, and serving as executive magistrate and chief development officer.

Who controls the officer, the state or the Centre

An officer is recruited by the Centre and employed by a state, and Rule 6(1) of the IAS (Cadre) Rules governs the overlap. As Deccan Herald quotes it, an officer may be deputed to the Centre “with the concurrence of the State Governments concerned and the Central Government”, and in a disagreement the Central Government decides and the state must give effect to the decision. The 1955 cadre-strength regulations let a cadre carry a Central Deputation Reserve of up to 40 per cent of its sanctioned duty posts.

The Ministry of Personnel’s backgrounder of January 2022 says states are not meeting that reserve: IAS officers on it fell from 309 in 2011 to 223, and use of the reserve fell from 25 per cent to 18 per cent. It proposed adding a proviso that each state make available officers up to the reserve, adjusted for the officers it actually has, with the number decided in consultation with the state. The Chief Minister of West Bengal wrote to the Prime Minister asking for the proposal to be withdrawn. Deccan Herald reported that the letter said the change “unilaterally mandates” states to release officers and would “destroy” the federal fabric. The Constitution’s federal design is the ground of that objection, and the Ministry’s reply is that the actual number would still be agreed with each state.

Vacancies are the other measure. As on 1 January 2025, the IAS had 6,877 authorised posts and 5,577 officers in position, and the IPS 5,099 posts and 4,594 officers, according to the Ministry’s reply of 25 March 2026. A year earlier the IAS had 1,316 vacancies, 794 in direct-recruit posts and 522 in promotion posts, which are filled from state civil service officers. The Ministry’s reply of 12 December 2024 attributed the promotion backlog to states not sending proposals, which stops the UPSC from holding selection committee meetings, or to a lack of eligible state officers.

Where the steel frame comes from

On 2 August 1922, in the House of Commons, Prime Minister David Lloyd George said there were about 1,200 British members of the Indian Civil Service among 315 million people in India. “They are the steel frame of the whole structure,” he said. The Ministry’s backgrounder says the Indian Civil Service examination was held only in London at first and began to be held in India as well from 1922.

The same backgrounder says Patel referred to the civil services as the steel frame of the nation. The government observes 21 April as Civil Services Day, the date chosen to commemorate Patel’s address to probationers at Metcalfe House in Delhi in 1947.