CRPF SI Syllabus, Exam Pattern, Eligibility, Important Dates

The pattern changed with the 2026 notice. Past papers are to the old one.

Paper-II

Paper-I has the same four subjects at 25 questions and 25 marks each.

• Paper-I: 1 mark a question, −0.25 for a wrong answer.
• Paper-II: 2 marks a question, −0.50 for a wrong answer, and set harder than Paper-I.
• Parts I to III of both papers are in Hindi and English.
• You can't carry time between parts or go back to a part once its timer runs out.
• Multi-shift marks are normalised (SSC notice of 2 June 2025), which is why cut-offs run to five decimal places.
• Answer key objections cost ₹50 a question, non-refundable, online only, under SSC's guidelines of 10 April 2026. No re-evaluation.

NCC bonus

An NCC 'C' certificate is now worth 16 marks where it counts, up from ten. Hold it by the closing date, claim it in the form and bring the original to document verification.

One syllabus covers both papers; Paper-II is set harder.

English carries 25 marks in Paper-I and 200 in Paper-II: 62 per cent of everything that counts. Quantitative Aptitude goes well past the arithmetic of the Constable (GD) paper.

Age, as on 01 August 2026

Relaxations: SC and ST 5 years; OBC 3 years; Ex-Servicemen 3 years after deducting military service. For Delhi Police posts only, widowed, divorced or judicially separated women may be up to 35 (40 for SC and ST), and Delhi Police departmental candidates with 3 years' service up to 30 (33 OBC, 35 SC and ST).

Qualification

A bachelor's degree by the closing date. Distance degrees count only if the university had UGC Distance Education Bureau approval for the period. Sub-Inspector (Fire) needs a B.Sc. with Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, or Matriculation plus a three-year engineering diploma in a listed branch.

Physical standards: Sub-Inspector (GD) in the CAPFs

The 157 cm rows for Gorkha and North-Eastern ST men are 13 cm below the general standard, and the Delhi Police table doesn't carry them in the same form. Height or chest relaxation needs a certificate in SSC's proforma from your home district. Weight must be in proportion to height.

Physical Endurance Test

PST and PET are qualifying only. Ex-Servicemen are exempt from the PET, not the PST. A pregnant candidate is declared temporarily unfit and re-examined six weeks after confinement, with the vacancy held for her.

Medical

• Distant vision 6/6 and 6/9, near vision N6 and N9, without any correction: no glasses and no surgery to improve acuity.
• High colour vision.
• No knock knee, flat foot, varicose vein or squint.
• Tattoos (religious symbol or name, as in the Army) only on the inner left forearm or the back of the hand, smaller than a quarter of that part. The Constable (GD) rule allows either forearm; this one doesn't.

The Review Medical Board sits in continuation of the detailed medical, and its decision is final.

Minimum marks in each paper, before NCC bonus: UR 30%, OBC and EWS 25%, others 20%. SSC may also set separate cut-offs for each part of Paper-I.

There's no state quota: SSC "neither collects vacancies nor makes allocation of candidates state-wise, region-wise, zone-wise, city-wise". It's one all India list.

The physical tests thin the field most

So clearing Paper-I puts you in a field of 83,000 on paper and about 46,000 in practice. 83,614 had qualified in Paper-I. 22,244 were shortlisted for the medical after Paper-II, and 5,296 were finally recommended (4,841 male, 455 female).

The preference rules

• "Once the candidate has been allotted his or her first available preference, as per merit, he or she will not be considered for any other option."
• If you're selected for a higher preference and then fail that post's medical, physical or educational standard, the candidature is rejected outright. You aren't considered for anything lower.

So if your eyesight or height is marginal for a post, don't rank it above CRPF just because you want it more.

Reservation

• A reserved-category candidate selected without relaxed standards takes an unreserved or reserved vacancy, whichever is better for them.
• One who used a relaxed standard counts against reserved vacancies only. An Ex-Serviceman's age deduction isn't a relaxed standard.
• 10 per cent of CAPF vacancies are for Ex-Servicemen.

All posts except Delhi Police carry All India Service Liability. Passing confers no right of appointment until the Government is satisfied you're suitable.

All six destinations pay the same, so pay isn't a reason to prefer one. Entry pay is 63 per cent above the Constable entry. DA, HRA and transport allowance come on top, plus risk and hardship allowances in operational areas, which for CRPF covers a large part of the Force.

Promotion

From Constable, CRPF's promotion rules take at least 8 years to Head Constable (plus the Junior Cadre and Section Commander courses), then 5 more subject to 18 years of total service and a Weapons and Tactics course to reach Sub-Inspector. This exam gets you there with a degree and two papers.

Probation is two years, with training and exams, and you must pass seven obstacle events (vertical board jump, rope hold from the board, Tarzan swing, horizontal board jump, parallel rope, monkey crawl and vertical rope) or you may not be retained.

Apply online on ssc.gov.in only. You don't apply to CRPF.

Pay by BHIM UPI, net banking or Visa, Mastercard, Maestro or RuPay debit card. A form without the fee is rejected, and the fee is never refunded. Helpline for form problems: 1800 309 3063.

Get these right first time

1. Post and force preferences (see Selection Process).
2. The NCC claim, which must be made in the form.
3. The exam medium.
4. Three exam centres in one region, which can't be changed later.

The form needs a live photograph to SSC's specification; blurred photos or signatures are rejected.

CRPF publishes the allotments on its Allotment Details page, including 755 male and 29 female Sub-Inspectors from the SSC SI-CPO Examination 2023, and 2022 allotments to the Group Centres at Imphal, Manipur and Sonhul, Chakia, Chandauli in Uttar Pradesh.

Training

Structure

A Directorate General, four Zonal Headquarters (Jammu and Kashmir, Central, North East, Southern), 21 Administrative and 2 Operational Sectors, 39 Administrative and 17 Operational Ranges, and 43 Group Centres, with separate sectors for CoBRA, Communications, the Rapid Action Force and VIP Security. There are four 100-bed composite hospitals, eighteen of 50 beds and six field hospitals.

About 5.68 per cent of personnel are on VIP security and about 8.5 per cent guard government installations. Sixteen companies guard the shrines at Mathura, Varanasi and Ayodhya, and the Force secures Vaishno Devi at Katra.

You pick three centres in one SSC region, and can't change them later. The nine regional offices are at Prayagraj (34-A Mahatma Gandhi Marg, Civil Lines, 211001), Kolkata, Bengaluru, Raipur, Guwahati, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Chennai and Mumbai, and the full centre lists are in the 2026 notice (Port Blair now appears as Sri Vijaya Puram). With no state quota, the centre only decides how far you travel.

Physical tests and the medical are held where the CAPFs decide. In the 2024 cycle the medical ran from 15 to 27 September 2025 for more than twenty-two thousand candidates.

How long the last cycles took

Nineteen months from notice to final result in 2024. Expect close to two years, and keep your registered mobile and e-mail working.

Admission Certificates are online only, from the website of the SSC regional office for your centre, shortly before each paper. If yours isn't there, contact that office with proof of application.

Report two hours before the start. Bring the printout and an original photo ID showing your date of birth (Aadhaar, voter ID, driving licence, PAN, passport, college ID, employer ID or ESM discharge book). If the ID has no date of birth, bring another original that does. Mobile phones get you debarred for two to seven years, switched off or not.

Call letters for the physical tests and medical come from the CAPFs through the same login.

Four results: Paper-I (with cut-offs), physical tests, Paper-II, and the final result with force allocation. SSC's 2024 final result gave, for each post and category, the vacancies, the number filled, the total and Paper-II cut-offs, and the date of birth of the last candidate selected. Final marks of every candidate were uploaded later.

Results stay provisional for a while. In 2024, 94 candidates were withheld for court cases and 26 for other reasons, 30 were debarred, a revised final result came on 26 November 2025, and revised physical results were declared for 144 candidates in March 2025 and 37 in April 2025.

Ties go to the higher Paper-II total, then the older candidate, then alphabetical order. There's no re-checking.

If you scored above a cut-off but weren't carried forward, write to the regional office within two months (or two weeks before the next stage, if sooner). If you're selected and hear nothing within one year, contact CRPF.

2024 final result, male, out of 400 (old scheme, NCC bonus included)

CRPF is the bottom row in every column except Ex-Servicemen. In a merit-cum-preference system the cut-off shows how many candidates rank a post above it, and the field ranks CRPF last. CRPF's Paper-II cut-off for male UR was 167.00 out of 200.

2024 final result, female

For women the CAPFs other than CISF sit within a mark and a half of each other.

Ex-Servicemen

513 ESM vacancies drew 413 recommended candidates.

2025 Paper-I cut-offs (old 200-mark paper)

Under the new scheme merit is Paper-II out of 320, so these totals won't carry over, but the order of the forces should. CRPF had 1,523 posts in 2024 and has 254 now, so expect its figure to rise. Cut-offs are in each result on ssc.gov.in.

1. Prepare for Paper-II. It's the whole merit now; Paper-I is pass or fail.
2. English is 62 per cent of what counts: 200 of Paper-II's 320 marks, 100 questions in an hour.
3. Practise against the sectional timers from the start: 15 minutes a part in Paper-I, 20 minutes a part for the first three parts of Paper-II, then an hour of English. That's 36 seconds a question for English and Paper-I, 60 for the rest.
4. Treat the maths as CGL-level. Algebra, geometry, trigonometry and DI are in it. SSC CGL Tier-I papers are the closest practice for every section.
5. Use SSC's past papers for question types and difficulty, not timing: they're all to the old pattern.
6. Check your eyes and any tattoos before you apply. No correction is allowed, and a right-forearm tattoo is a bar.
7. Train for five events, not one run. Sprint, middle distance, long jump, high jump and shot put. Endurance training alone fails the field events.
8. Rank preferences with the medical rule in mind. If your realistic score is in the low 300s, CRPF and BSF are where it reaches.
9. Ex-Servicemen: this is the emptiest pool in the exam.

SSC publishes previous year papers on ssc.gov.in and a mock test in the Candidate's Corner. All past papers are to the old pattern (200-question Paper-I, English-only Paper-II), so use them for question types, not timing. Tentative answer keys go up after each paper.

• Staff Selection Commission: apply, admit cards, results
• 2026 notice (69 pages) and 2025 notice
• Previous Year Question Papers, Syllabus, Examination Calendar, Normalization Method, Certificate formats
• 2024 cycle: final result, revised final result, physical test result, final vacancies
• 2025 cycle: Paper-I result, tentative vacancies
• CRPF: Allotment Details, Career Prospects, Role of CRPF
• CRPF Recruitment: for other cadres, not SI (GD)

Does CRPF conduct its own Sub-Inspector exam?

Not for Sub-Inspector (GD), which comes through SSC. CRPF recruits other cadres, such as Sub-Inspector (Hindi Translator) and the technical, signal and tradesmen posts, on rect.crpf.gov.in.

What changed in the 2026 notice?

Paper-I halved to 100 questions in an hour, Paper-II became four subjects for 320 marks, and merit now rests on Paper-II alone.

What marks do I need for CRPF?

Less than for any other destination. In 2024 CRPF male UR closed at 303.58 of 400, and female UR at 317.86. The new scheme changes the totals, not the order.

Is there a state quota?

No. It's one all India merit list.

How many CRPF posts are there this cycle?

254: 225 male and 29 female, with 25 for Ex-Servicemen.

What is the eyesight requirement?

6/6 and 6/9 distant, N6 and N9 near, with no glasses, lenses or surgery, and high colour vision.

Is it worth sitting this rather than the Constable exam?

For a graduate, yes. Promotion from Constable to Sub-Inspector needs at least eighteen years of service. The Constable exam has twenty times the vacancies, though.