Overview
- In a June 26 press briefing MPSC chairman Vivek Bhimanwar announced that all forthcoming preliminary exams will run in CBT mode and that preliminary results will be targeted for release within 21 days.
- The commission formally opened Group C applications on June 27 for 2,619 vacancies, set the CBT prelim for September 27, and gave a July 17 deadline for online registration.
- MPSC says it will use technical assistance from IIT Bombay, require security audits of exam centres by C‑DAC, publish response sheets, and apply a statistical normalisation formula for multi‑session papers.
- Student and aspirant groups have objected to the CBT plan, citing past issues with outsourced online tests such as paper leaks, impersonation, technical failures, opaque normalisation and the risk of distant exam centres for rural candidates, and they have threatened protests if the policy is not reviewed.
- The commission frames the shift as needed to handle a projected four‑ to five‑fold rise in vacancies and to run prelims more often from 2027, and it separately announced removal of optional subject papers from the State Services mains beginning with the 2027 cycle.