About 550 aspirants from both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are expected to have qualified in the Civil Services Preliminary examination, known as Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT), the results of which were declared on Tuesday.
Around 28,000 aspirants had appeared for the exam from the two States, with 18,161 appearing from Hyderabad city.
Vijayawada, which was one of the 14 new centres introduced this year, saw 4,755 aspirants attending the exam, while 4,405 appeared from Visakhapatnam.
All those who have qualified in the prelims will have to appear for the Civil Services Main examination, which is scheduled to commence on December 14.
V. Gopala Krishna of Brain Tree coaching centre said the number of successful aspirants is higher from the urban areas than the semi-urban or rural areas.
“This has been the trend ever since the aptitude section was introduced,” he said.
The examination was mired in controversies since the beginning. First, the notification was delayed and later, there were indications of postponement of the exam due to protests from the Hindi-medium belt over translation issue.
The government responded by cancelling the compulsory English section in Paper-II and also appointed a committee to look into the grievances. Finally, the examination was held as scheduled on time. The committee recently submitted its report to the UPSC.
Trainers said the deletion of English does not seem to have had any effect on the biased nature of the paper. The cut-off mark for the general category is said to be around 216 out of 400, said Mr. Gopala Krishna.
At the All India level, about 16,900 aspirants among 4,51,602 who had appeared for the examination have qualified.
All the successful candidates have to apply again in the Detailed Application Form (DAF) for Civil Services (Main) examination on ‘www.upsc.gov.in’.
The DAF will be available on the website from October 28 to November 11.
