Half the candidates who had registered themselves skipped the first Civil Services Aptitude Test conducted by the Union Public Service Commission on Sunday. The UPSC has replaced preliminary exams with CSAT from this year to provide a level playing field for all candidates irrespective of their academic background.

The confusion surrounding the pattern of the CSAT is believed to be the reason for the large-scale absenteeism. The UPSC had not clarified the total number or type of questions that would be asked in the exam and many candidates thought this would affect their performance and so preferred to give the exam next year.

There were 87 centres for the 32,983 registered candidates but only 16,587 candidates turned up, recording an attendance of 50.28 per cent in the morning session.In the afternoon session, the attendance fell further, to 49.45 per cent, with only 16,311 students turning up. “The questions in Paper I had a distinct flavour of testing the sensitivity of the candidate to the issues of the aam aadmi.

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Courtesy: Deccanchronicle.com