UPSC Medium of Exam: Hindi and Other Languages

The Civil Services Exam is not an English-only exam. Both prelims papers are set in Hindi and English, and in the mains you can write every paper except the two qualifying language papers in English or in any one language of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution.

You choose your medium when you apply, and the notice allows no change afterwards. This guide sets out the rules from the CSE 2026 notice, so you can make that choice knowingly.

Prelims: Hindi and English

The notice says both papers of the preliminary exam, General Studies Paper I and Paper II, are set in Hindi and English. They are objective papers, so you do not write answers: you mark them on an OMR sheet. Appendix IV of the notice asks you to write the name of your centre and subject on that sheet in English or Hindi.

Mains: choose your medium

The main exam's written papers are essay-type, and the notice gives you a choice of medium for them:

• One medium for the papers that count. You can answer all the papers, except the qualifying language papers A and B, in English or in any one language of the Eighth Schedule.
• The optional can be in English. If you write the Essay and the four General Studies papers in an Eighth Schedule language, you may still write your two optional papers in English.
• The question papers come in Hindi and English. Apart from the literature papers, the notice says the mains question papers are set in Hindi and English only, so you read the questions in one of these two even if you answer in another language.
• Technical terms. If you answer in an Indian language, you may add the English version of technical terms in brackets. The notice warns that misusing this can cost marks, and in extreme cases a script may not be valued at all for being in an unauthorised medium.

Literature optionals

If your optional is the literature of a language, the notice says you may have to answer some or all questions in that language; most literature papers say the answers must be written in it. Questions that do not need a particular language are answered in your chosen medium. The list of optional subjects has every literature option.

The two language papers

Paper A is one Indian language that you choose from the languages of the Eighth Schedule, and Paper B is English. Each carries 300 marks, is of matriculation standard, and is qualifying: the marks are not counted for your rank. You need 25% in each, or your Essay, General Studies and optional papers are not taken into account. The notice says you answer them in the language concerned, except where translation is involved.

Paper A is not compulsory for candidates from Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim, or for candidates with a hearing impairment who were exempted from a second or third language by their board or university. The language papers guide covers the syllabus.

Scripts for each language

The notice fixes the script you must use for each language, whether as your medium or in a language or literature paper:

Language	Script
Assamese	Assamese
Bengali	Bengali
Gujarati	Gujarati
Hindi	Devanagari
Kannada	Kannada
Kashmiri	Persian
Konkani	Devanagari
Malayalam	Malayalam
Manipuri	Bengali or Meitei Mayek
Marathi	Devanagari
Nepali	Devanagari
Odia	Odia
Punjabi	Gurumukhi
Sanskrit	Devanagari
Sindhi	Devanagari or Arabic
Tamil	Tamil
Telugu	Telugu
Urdu	Persian
Bodo	Devanagari
Dogri	Devanagari
Maithili	Devanagari
Santhali	Devanagari or Olchiki

Two languages have a split between question and answer. For Santhali the question paper is printed in Devanagari, but you may answer in Devanagari or Olchiki. For Manipuri it is printed in Bengali script, and you may answer in Bengali or Meitei Mayek.

The interview

The CSE 2026 notice does not set out the language of the interview. UPSC's instructions for CSE 2025 applications did, citing Rule 15(2) of the CSE Rules, 2025:

• If you wrote the mains in an Indian language, you could choose that language, English or Hindi for the interview.
• If you wrote the mains in English, you could choose English, Hindi or the Indian language you took for the compulsory language paper.
• If you were exempt from the compulsory Indian language paper, you had to choose English or Hindi.

Those instructions also said the interview medium is chosen in the application form and cannot be changed later. Check the instructions for your own year before you apply. The interview guide covers the rest of the personality test.

What you fix when you apply

In the exam-specific part of the application the notice asks for your mains medium, the medium of your optional if you choose an Indian language as your mains medium, your compulsory Indian language and your optional subject. It accepts no request to change any of these once the form is submitted. See the application guide.

Choosing your medium

• Choose the language you write best in under time pressure. Every mains paper is three hours long, so speed and clarity matter as much as knowledge.
• Practise full answers in that medium before you commit to it in the form.
• Decide on the optional separately. You can keep it in English while writing everything else in an Indian language, if that suits you.
• Use the bracketed English for technical terms sparingly, given the notice's warning about misuse.