In a major blow to Civils’ aspirants, PM Narendra Modi-led government is reportedly contemplating to lower the upper age limit for the prestigious UPSC Civil services as well as to reduce the number of attempts. While few reports indicate that government has already taken a formal decision regarding the same and even posted it on government website, meanwhile government institutions state that they haven’t received any GO on this yet.

According to reports, the upper age limit for general category is lowered from 30 to 26, for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from 33 to 28 and for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) categories it will be down from 35 to 29. Reports indicate that the number of attempts have also been reduced as general category aspirants can appear for the test only thrice contrary to previous four whereas the number of attempts for OBCs is fixed at five and for SCs and STs at six.

The order is likely to be implemented as early as in 2015. Meanwhile, the demand, to lower upper age limit and reduce the number of attempts, has been there for a while. In fact, many former civil servants have been asking for lowering the upper age limit as they believed that at 35 one could not learn much and there was hardly any scope to achieve higher ranking.