UPSC Advertisement 12/2026: What the Selection Actually Tests

Advertisement No. 12/2026 does not contain a chapter list, a mark scheme, or a sample paper. Selection is by interview. If too many people apply, the commission can add a recruitment test. Until that test is notified, the only syllabus is the duty and the desirable qualification printed against each vacancy. Posts, pay and the closing time are on the recruitment page.

No paper has been notified

The instructions say the commission may shortlist on the desirable qualification, on a degree higher than the minimum, on experience above the minimum, on experience gained before the essential qualification, or by holding a recruitment test. Mention every relevant degree and every relevant year of work. A fact you leave off the form cannot be used to keep you in the list.

If a test is held, the minimum mark for it is decided for that case. The interview minimum is already printed: 50, 45 and 40 out of 100, for unreserved, OBC, and SC, ST and persons with disability. You need both, not one.

The centres named for a recruitment test, if one is held, are the usual UPSC list in the instructions. The advertisement says that list can change, and the change will be on the commission's website before the test.

What the level pays

The advertisement prints the level, not a monthly salary. Under the Central Civil Services (Revised Pay) Rules, 2016, the first cell of the pay matrix is Rs 44,900 at Level 7, Rs 56,100 at Level 10, and Rs 67,700 at Level 11. The Delhi Law Officer posts are Level 7. The sugar-technology post is Level 10. Assistant Legislative Counsel and the cardiology post are Level 11. The cardiology post also carries non-practising allowance because private practice is prohibited. The advertisement does not print the allowance rate, dearness allowance, or house rent. Anyone quoting an in-hand figure is estimating. The notice itself stops at the level.

Sugar technology

The work is teaching, research and advice at the National Sugar Institute, Kanpur, plus whatever the director assigns. The essential pair is a science or engineering degree and a sugar-technology associateship or postgraduate diploma, with three years of teaching, research, advisory work, or managerial work in a sugar factory.

The desirable lines are the ones that matter if the list is long: M.Sc. Chemistry, or M.Tech in sugar technology, and experience of drafting or editing scientific and technological reports. If you are called, the conversation follows the factory you worked in. Be able to walk a cane or beet juice from clarification, through evaporation, to crystallisation and centrifugation, and to say which loss you measured and which report you wrote. The advertisement does not set a general science paper. Probation on this post is one year.

The two law posts

Assistant Legislative Counsel is legislative drafting and scrutiny of statutory rules and orders, in the Legislative Department at New Delhi. Pay is Level 11, whose first cell is Rs 67,700. Probation is two years. The advertisement says preference goes to a person with experience of legislative drafting. That preference is the practical syllabus. Be ready to explain one bill or one set of rules you drafted or vetted: the instruction, the existing Act, the clause you changed, and why the existing section could not simply be reused.

A law degree is essential. After that, one of five routes has to be complete:

A qualified legal practitioner, in this advertisement, is an advocate or pleader with at least seven years of practice, or a Bombay or Calcutta High Court attorney of at least five years, or an attorney and an advocate whose periods together are at least five years. Notes 2 and 3 allow those periods to be combined. Two years of practice, which is enough for the Delhi Law Officer, is not enough here.

The Law Officer in the Land and Building Department of Delhi is Level 7, first cell Rs 44,900, with two years of probation and an induction training of at least two weeks. The day's work is writ petitions on land acquisition and alternative plots in the High Court and the Supreme Court, acquisition cases and civil suits before the Additional District Magistrate and the subordinate courts of Delhi, and the other work of that legal branch. The experience bar is two years as a legal practitioner or two years of legal work in a government office. For the interview, take one acquisition file you actually handled: the notification, the award, the writ ground, and the relief the government sought. The OBC certificate for these three posts follows the GNCTD rule printed in the advertisement, including the 8 September 1993 residence condition in OM 19(02)/2011/S.IV/Vol.I/856 dated 31 May 2021.

Cardiology

The duties are patient care in cardiology, research in the specialty, and other work the NDMC authorities assign. The qualification is a recognised medical degree in the schedules of the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956 (a Part II third-schedule qualification must also meet section 13(3)) and D.M. (Cardiology), with three years in the specialty after that postgraduate degree. Pay is Level 11, first cell Rs 67,700, plus non-practising allowance. Private practice of any kind is prohibited. If you are asked about outside practice, the advertisement has already answered it. Probation is one year. The post is not reserved for persons with benchmark disability. Some categories are marked suitable. Suitable is not the same as reserved.

There is no printed clinical syllabus beyond that. The shortlist, if the field is crowded, will use a higher qualification or more years than the three that are essential. Put those years on the form.