The Delhi High Court dismissed a petition challenging the 1 August cut-off date used by UPSC for reckoning the upper age limit of candidates for the Civil Services Examination, holding that the petitioner had no legitimate ground to seek a shift of the cut-off to 1 January. The Court held that fixation of a cut-off date for determining the upper age limit of candidates appearing in the UPSC Civil Services Examination is a matter within the executive domain, and courts must exercise judicial restraint in interfering with such fixation unless the cut-off date is shown to be blatantly discriminatory, arbitrary, or whimsical.
The date of 1 January carries no inherent sanctity merely because it marks the beginning of the Gregorian calendar year, and the choice of 1 August as the cut-off date for CSE 2026 cannot be struck down on the ground that it creates an artificial classification among candidates who attain the upper age within the same calendar year, added the Court.
The Division Bench comprising Justice C. Hari Shankar and Justice Amit Mahajan rejected the petitioner’s argument that all candidates who turned 32 within a calendar year form one homogeneous class, observing that 1 January is merely the first day of the Gregorian calendar and carries no inherent sanctity. The Court noted that the Gregorian calendar itself is a man-made construct, that different calendars across the world have months of varying lengths, and that in parts of India the traditional lunar New Year fell on 17 August 2026.
The Court distinguished the petitioner’s reliance on D.S. Nakara v. Union of India [(1983) 1 SCC 305], observing that Nakara dealt with the very fixation of a cut-off date, whereas the petitioner was not disputing the decision to fix a cut-off but only seeking a shift in the date. The Court further noted that Nakara has, over time, been considerably watered down by the Supreme Court itself.
The Court reiterated the settled legal position that the fixation of cut-off dates lies within the domain of the executive, and judicial interference is warranted only where the cut-off date is blatantly discriminatory, arbitrary, capricious, or whimsical. The Court also flagged the wider public interest impact, observing that granting the petitioner’s prayer would render millions of otherwise ineligible candidates eligible, and that the petitioner could not be singled out for exclusive treatment.
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Briefly, the petitioner, Nivedika Ojha, is an aspirant for the Civil Services Examination (CSE) 2026 conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). She was rendered ineligible to appear for the examination because she had crossed the upper age limit of 32 years as on the cut-off date of 1 August 2026. The petitioner was born on 16 July 1994 and attained the age of 32 on 16 July 2026 itself, meaning that by 1 August 2026 she was already overage. The petitioner did not challenge the fixation of 32 years as the maximum age for appearing in the CSE; her grievance was specifically against the choice of 1 August as the cut-off date for reckoning age. She contended that the cut-off date ought to have been 1 January, in which case she would have been eligible to compete.
The 1 August cut-off date traces its origin to the Office Memorandum (OM) dated 4 December 1979 issued by the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR), which was reiterated by the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) OM dated 14 July 1988, and subsequently adopted in Examination Notice 05/2026-CSE dated 4 February 2026 issued by UPSC. The petitioner first approached the Central Administrative Tribunal by way of OA, which was dismissed.
