UP Lekhpal Exam: PET, Mains Pattern, Syllabus & Eligibility

A Rajaswa Lekhpal is the revenue department's officer at the village level, and in practice the department's point of contact for the people living there. The work centres on land records — maintaining the khatauni and other registers, recording changes of ownership, measuring and demarcating plots when disputes arise, and keeping the record of rights current.

Beyond records, the Lekhpal conducts crop surveys, assists in assessing damage after floods, drought or fire so that relief can be released, verifies documents for various government schemes, and supports the Tehsildar and the district administration in revenue collection and reporting.

The reason the post draws such large numbers of applicants is the combination it offers: a permanent state government job, a posting within your own district or region rather than anywhere in the country, and an eligibility bar set at Class 12 rather than graduation. Very few state posts combine all three, and the application numbers reflect it.

That popularity is also the difficulty. With lakhs of candidates for a few thousand posts, the cut-off sits high and small margins decide the result, which is why the sections most candidates neglect are usually the ones that separate the list.

The Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission runs a common Preliminary Eligibility Test for its Group C recruitments. You write the PET first, receive a score and a category, and only then can you apply when a specific recruitment such as Lekhpal is notified. A candidate without a valid PET score cannot submit an application at all, however well prepared they are.

The PET itself is a two-hour objective test of 100 questions worth 100 marks. Its syllabus is broad rather than deep: Indian history, the national movement, geography, economy, the Constitution and public administration, general science, elementary arithmetic, General Hindi, General English, logic and reasoning, current affairs and general awareness, along with comprehension passages in Hindi and questions on interpreting graphs and tables.

Two practical points matter more than the syllabus. First, the PET score has a defined period of validity, and the Commission has revised that period since the system began — check the current PET notification for the rule that applies to your score rather than relying on what was true in an earlier cycle. Second, because the score decides whether you can apply at all and often shapes the shortlist, treating the PET as a formality is the most common and most expensive mistake in this process.

Negative marking applies in the PET at one-fourth of a mark per wrong answer. Confirm this along with the paper structure from the current notification, since the Commission has adjusted the format between cycles.

The main examination is a single objective paper of two hours with 100 questions carrying one mark each, split evenly across four subjects.

Negative marking of one-fourth of a mark applies for each wrong answer. Confirm the current marking scheme from the notification, since it has been stated differently in different cycles.

General Hindi covers grammar and usage at school level — sandhi, samas, tatsam and tadbhav words, synonyms and antonyms, idioms and proverbs, error correction and comprehension. Candidates who speak Hindi fluently still lose marks here, because the questions test formal grammar rather than everyday usage.

Mathematics is at Class 10 level: number system, percentage, profit and loss, ratio and proportion, average, time and work, time and distance, simple and compound interest, algebra, geometry, mensuration and statistics. It is the most predictable section in the paper and the easiest place to secure full marks with steady practice.

General Knowledge covers Indian history and the freedom movement, geography, polity, economy, general science, current affairs and sports, with a distinct layer of Uttar Pradesh specific material — the state's districts, rivers, crops, festivals, historical sites, schemes and current developments. That state layer is worth preparing separately.

This is the section unique to the UP Lekhpal exam, and it is where candidates preparing from general competitive material fall short. Twenty-five marks, a quarter of the paper, on a syllabus that no national exam covers.

Broadly it deals with rural India as a subject in its own right: the structure of rural society and its institutions, panchayati raj and the three-tier system, rural administration and the revenue hierarchy from Lekhpal upward, land reforms and land record systems, agriculture and irrigation, rural credit and cooperative institutions, rural health, sanitation and education, and the major central and state rural development schemes with their objectives and target groups.

Two things make it scoring rather than difficult. The syllabus is finite — it does not expand endlessly the way current affairs does — and much of it is factual, so revision works. A candidate who gives this section proper time can reasonably target close to full marks, and in an exam decided by narrow margins that is often the whole gap between selection and the waiting list.

Study it from state-level material rather than national General Studies books, since the schemes, the administrative terms and the revenue vocabulary are specific to Uttar Pradesh. Keep a separate notebook for scheme names, their launch purpose and their beneficiaries, because that is the form the questions usually take.

The educational qualification is an Intermediate pass, that is Class 12, from a recognised board. There is no graduation requirement, which is what makes this one of the most accessible permanent government posts in the state.

The age band is generally 18 to 40 years as on the cut-off date, with relaxations for reserved categories under state rules. Both the age limits and the relaxations have been revised between cycles, so confirm them from the current notification.

For preparation, sequence the work by what is gated. The PET comes first, so build the broad base it tests — history, geography, polity, economy, general science, arithmetic, Hindi and reasoning — and treat that base as the foundation for everything afterwards, because three of the four Mains sections draw from it.

Then add the two subjects that are specific to this exam. Village Society and Development needs its own dedicated study, and the Uttar Pradesh layer within General Knowledge needs its own notes on districts, rivers, crops, historical sites and state schemes. These two together are roughly 35 to 40 marks of the Mains paper and receive the least attention from most candidates.

Give General Hindi regular short sessions rather than one long stretch near the exam. Grammar improves slowly, and 25 marks from a fixed syllabus is too reliable a return to leave to fluency.

For Mathematics, daily timed practice beats fresh theory. The topics are fixed and repeat every cycle, so the aim is to reach the point where a question is recognised rather than worked out from first principles.

Candidates preparing for UP Police Constable share most of the General Knowledge and Hindi base, and those aiming higher later will find the same foundation supports SSC MTS and other national exams. For a structured General Studies course, see the 100 Hour GS Course 2026.