Union Public Service Commission CSE: The Tie Breaking Rule

The Union Public Service Commission has released the Tie-breaking rules for the various Exams that it conducts. It is advisable to understand the same lest you might be confusing yourself to no end concerning why UPSC chose to select another candidate though you had exactly the same score?

What is a Tie-breaking rule, first of all?

As the very word Tie-breaking explains, the rule applies only when there are at least two (or more) of the candidates with the same score. As a result, the number of the profiles might go beyond the number that can be invited.

Thus, it should be noted that the Tie-breaking rules do not apply to any of the candidates who scores higher than the cut-off. And that again, it would be applicable only in the case of the minimum cut-off provided that there happen to be more than a single candidate with the same score.

Why does UPSC make use of the Tie-breaking Rule(s)?

The Union Public Service Commission has released the revised Tie-breaking rules for several Exams conducted by the Government body. The revised rules would be effective for the examinations and/or the recruitments notified after 28th August, 2019, that is to say, as per the date of approval by the UPSC.

For the sake of the convenience of the reader, the Exams that had been notified by UPSC after 28^th August as specified above are listed below:

Engineering Services Exam,
Combined Geo-Scientist Exam,
Combined Defence Services Exam,
National Defence Academy & Naval Academy Exams,
Apart from the Civil Services Exam

The point to be driven back home is that most of the organizations do have their own Tie-breaking rules to resolve the cases concerned. Any organization of repute usually prefers employing the Tie-breaking rules in order to decide the merit inter se amongst (or say, in between if there are only two of them) candidates with the same score of marks.

Needless to say, UPSC too makes use of the Tie-breaking rules for the same purpose as already specified above. The government body makes use of the rules in order to break (or shall we say, resolve) the tie cases on the basis of the scores and/or the age(s) of the candidates concerned etc.

How does a UPSC Tie-breaking rule(s) function?

By now, it’s clear that the UPSC Tie-breaking rule(s) aim at filtering the candidates based upon the score first of all, and then the candidates’ age. The point to be noted is that the Union Public Service Commission is the Government body responsible for the recruitments made for the:

IAS – Indian Administrative Service
IFS – Indian Foreign Service, and
IPS – Indian Police Service

apart from various other Central Services and the designations.

The conditions that apply for the UPSC Tie-breaking rules

UPSC considers the conditions specified below while making use of the Tie-breaking rule(s).

A candidate’s score in the Prelimsis not considered when it comes to declare the final rank in the Civil Services Exam result. Prelims is the qualifying Exam.
In case, at least two, or more of the candidates score the same aggregate of marks, UPSC would rank the candidate higher with a greater score when his marks for the Compulsory or the Common Papers are added to his score for the Interview aka Personality Test.
In case, the total of the marks arrived at by the process specified above is also identical, UPSC ranks the candidates on the grounds of their age. The candidate(s) senior in the age would be ranked higher.

There used to be yet another filter employed by UPSC while implementing the Tie-breaking rule(s) until the year 2018. In case, the filters listed above failed to resolve any of the cases, the candidate with the greater score in the compulsory paper(s) was ranked higher.

However, it is worth noting that UPSC has not included the Third Filter in the revised Tie-breaking rule(s) that had been announced on February 26^th.