The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has announced to the Supreme Court that it will now release the provisional answer key for the Civil Services Preliminary Examination soon after the exam is conducted. This marks a major shift from its previous policy of releasing the answer key only after the entire examination cycle is complete. The decision comes in response to a petition challenging the commission's practice of withholding the answer keys, marks, and cut-off scores until after the final results.

The Supreme Court, hearing a petition seeking greater transparency in the Civil Services Examination, appointed senior advocate Jaideep Gupta as amicus curiae to assist the court. The court also directed the petitioners to provide Gupta with a copy of the petition. The petition, filed by advocates Saroj Tripathi and Rajeev Dubey, argued that withholding the answer keys deprives candidates of the opportunity to seek timely and effective remedies. They contended that the previous system was opaque and prevented genuine grievances from surfacing before appointments were made. They argued that this undermined transparency, potentially leading to irregularities in candidate selection and denying deserving aspirants a fair chance to compete.

The UPSC, in its affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court, stated that it had made a "conscious and well-considered decision" to publish the provisional answer key after the preliminary examination. After the release of the provisional answer keys, candidates who appeared in the exam will be invited to submit representations or objections. Each representation or objection must be supported by at least three authoritative sources. Unsupported claims will be rejected. The provisional answer key, along with the representations and objections, will then be placed before a panel of experts in the concerned subject. The Commission will evaluate the objections with the help of subject experts, who will finalize the answer key after an in-depth scrutiny. The final answer key will be used to declare the Prelims results and will be published after the final results of the Civil Services Examination.

This decision is expected to benefit lakhs of aspirants who appear for the highly competitive examination every year. It will allow candidates to verify their performance in real time and hold the Commission accountable to higher standards of transparency. For years, civil service aspirants and other stakeholders have demanded earlier disclosure of answer keys. Parliamentary Committees and the Central Administrative Tribunal have also recommended that UPSC publish preliminary exam answer keys alongside results, but these recommendations were largely ignored. The petitioner's counsel noted that the affidavit did not clarify redressal measures for candidates who appeared in the CSE 2025 Prelims in May 2025, where no provisional keys were provided.