ESIC Pharmacist Syllabus, Exam Pattern, Eligibility

It's the standard CRE paper, the same for every group: a 90-minute computer based test of 100 multiple choice questions for 400 marks, four marks a question, four options each. None of the three pharmacist groups has a skill test.

Sectional timing

The paper runs as five sections of 20 questions, 18 minutes each. You see one section at a time. When its 18 minutes are up it locks and the next one opens, and a locked section "will never come back again for any action". Unused time doesn't carry over. A question marked for review in a locked section counts as unanswered unless you also saved an answer. The paper submits itself at 90 minutes.

Negative marking

A wrong answer costs a quarter of a mark; a right one earns four.

Medium

English only for all three pharmacist groups. AIIMS refuses requests to change the medium.

Scribe and compensatory time

A candidate entitled to a scribe gets at least 20 minutes of compensatory time per hour, in multiples of five minutes. The scribe may read out the instructions and questions and click the mouse, but must not explain or interpret a question.

AIIMS gives each group a one-word domain. For all three ESIC pharmacist groups it is "Pharmacy", set "in accordance with the level of education qualification and experience as mentioned in the qualification". There is no topic list and no weightage.

So the level is set by each stream's qualification, and those are different disciplines:

Allopathic: the D.Pharm curriculum

The Diploma in Pharmacy is framed by the Pharmacy Council of India under Regulation 7 of the Education Regulations, 2020: eleven theory courses, 825 teaching hours, 600 practical hours and 500 hours of practical training. It's the best published map of what the 80 Pharmacy questions can cover.

Ayurvedic and homeopathic

AIIMS cites no curriculum for either. The paper follows the qualification: the B.Pharm (Ayurveda) or two-year Diploma in Ayurvedic Pharmacy, and the one-year diploma or certificate in Homeopathic Pharmacy.

The 20 general questions

General Knowledge and Aptitude plus Knowledge of Computer, 80 of the 400 marks. AIIMS doesn't break either down. Basic computer knowledge is also a desirable qualification for the homeopathic post.

Indian nationals only. Everything is judged as on the closing date of online registration. AIIMS checks nothing before the exam; the ESIC Regional Office verifies it months later.

Age relaxation

A reserved-category candidate applying against unreserved vacancies gets no age relaxation and no lower qualifying mark. Disability relaxation applies to any post identified as suitable, reserved or not.

Check your certificate dates

An OBC or EWS certificate has to be dated the way the advertisement requires. At ESIC Regional Office Guwahati's document verification for CRE 2025 in February 2026, two Pharmacist (Allopathic) candidates who had passed the exam lost their candidature over a "date barred OBC NCL certificate". No extra time is given at that stage to get a new one.

No Objection Certificate

Government, PSU and autonomous-body staff, contract staff included, must upload one by the scheduled date or they can't sit the exam.

No interview and no skill test. The merit list comes from the computer based test alone. The process is split between AIIMS and ESIC, and you deal with both.

1. Apply to AIIMS on the AIIMS portal, under the group for your stream. Two streams means two forms and two fees.
2. Computer based test, run by AIIMS. Nothing about eligibility is checked yet.
3. Normalisation, if the group ran in more than one shift: raw marks become percentile scores under AIIMS Notice No. 35/2023, to seven decimal places.
4. Result, published by AIIMS, with marks and rank by roll number.
5. Choice filling and online seat allocation, run by AIIMS. You list the organisations you want in order, and seats go by merit.
6. Document verification at the ESIC Regional Office you're allotted to, on dates that office sets.
7. Appointment by ESIC, provisional until probation, verification of qualifications, and character and antecedent checks are done.

In the last cycle this took about eight months from advertisement to an ESIC list. The dates are under Important Dates.

How a qualified candidate still loses the post

• Missing document verification. At Guwahati in the 2025 cycle, two Pharmacist (Allopathic) candidates were cancelled for absence.
• The vacancy goes. The same Guwahati notice cancelled candidatures "due to change in vacancy position". The advertisement allows posts in a group or a participating organisation to be added or removed at any time.
• Not filling choices. If you don't exercise choices in the window, you aren't considered for any organisation, whatever your rank. If you fill only some, you aren't considered for the rest.
• Not reporting. A candidate allotted a seat who doesn't report, for any reason, loses their candidature for the whole exam.

All three streams are paid the same. The CRE 2025 advertisement gives the figure in rupees as well as the level:

ESIC Regional Office Guwahati's notice confirms "Level-5 of the Pay Matrix of the Seventh Pay Commission" for the Pharmacist (Allopathic) post. Allowances are added as per the rules of the ESIC hospital or institution you're posted to.

You apply to AIIMS, not ESIC, online at aiimsexams.ac.in through One Time Registration. Nothing goes by post.

Pay by debit card, credit card or net banking. The fee is per group, so applying for two pharmacist streams means paying twice. It isn't refunded, even if you're rejected as ineligible. The one exception: SC and ST candidates who actually sit the exam get it back after the result.

• Use your One Time Registration. A form under a duplicate or different Candidate ID is rejected.
• Photo, signature and thumb impression must follow the Upload Image Instructions, or the form is rejected.
• Corrections aren't accepted by email or letter, or after the dates in the schedule.
• The No Objection Certificate, if you need one, has its own upload deadline.

Documents for verification

ESIC checks these months after the result, and you're assumed to have held everything since the day you applied. No extra time is given to get a certificate. Bring the registration slip, admit card, proof of date of birth, category or income and asset certificate, disability certificate if claimed, anything supporting an age relaxation, the No Objection Certificate, your qualification, pharmacist registration and any experience certificate.

For the ayurvedic stream the experience certificate is part of the essential qualification. It must come from the head of the organisation, give the period by date, month and year, state the pay and describe the duties.

In CRE 2025, ESIC's pharmacist vacancies were spread like this:

Delhi NCR had 108 of the 241 allopathic posts, and Delhi, Gujarat and the North-East together had 152. The spread changes from cycle to cycle.

Group 12 had 312 vacancies in all. ESIC's 241 shared one paper and one merit list with 71 posts at AIIMS Rishikesh, Bathinda, Jammu, Mangalagiri, Deoghar, Gorakhpur, Jodhpur, Patna and Bhopal, JIPMER Puducherry and Yanam, and Lady Hardinge Medical College. The ayurvedic and homeopathic groups were all ESIC.

AIIMS holds the test in all major States and Union Territories, subject to enough applications. The state you pick is only a preference; AIIMS can allot any city.

If a group gets fewer than 500 applications, AIIMS may test it separately in Delhi and the NCR only, with ten days' notice. The ayurvedic and homeopathic groups, with five and three posts, are the likely cases.

The exam centre has nothing to do with your posting. That depends on the ESIC region you get at allocation, and document verification is held at that region's office: for the North-East posts in 2025, that meant Guwahati.

There's no fixed yearly calendar. ESIC pharmacist posts appear when ESIC brings them to a CRE cycle, and the dates are then the CRE's. The last cycle that carried them:

About three months from test to result, and three more to document verification. Each ESIC Regional Office sets its own verification dates.

The 2026 cycle, CRE-5 (Notice No. 93/2026), was advertised on 13 June 2026, closed on 3 July and was held from 25 to 27 July. It has no ESIC pharmacist post.

The admit card comes from AIIMS. Download it from your login on aiimsexams.ac.in; nothing is posted.

• It's released three days before your group's exam date.
• The exam city and state are notified seven days before that.
• Take the printout to the centre and hand it to the invigilator for attendance.
• ESIC asks for it again at document verification, so keep a copy.

The admit card is generated from what you typed, with no eligibility check. It lets you sit the exam and guarantees nothing more.

AIIMS publishes the result group by group on aiimsexams.ac.in, listing each provisionally qualified candidate by roll number with category, gender, marks out of 400 and rank. For CRE 2025 the results came out on 29 November 2025. Multi-shift groups are ranked on normalised percentile scores, not raw marks.

After document verification, each ESIC Regional Office publishes its own list of provisionally eligible candidates on the ESIC recruitments page, with candidate category, allotment category and overall rank, plus the cancelled candidatures and why. An OBC candidate shown with an allotment category of UR has ranked high enough for an unreserved seat.

The CRE sets a qualifying mark in advance:

Ex-servicemen qualify at their own category's percentage. A reserved-category candidate applying against unreserved vacancies doesn't get the lower percentage.

Clearing the line isn't enough. AIIMS has lately published everyone above it, thousands of names for a few hundred posts, and the post goes by rank at allocation. The only real cut-off ESIC publishes is in its Regional Office notices: in CRE 2025, Guwahati filled its Pharmacist (Allopathic) posts from overall ranks 65 to 945, with a Scheduled Caste candidate at 403 and a Scheduled Tribe candidate at 945.

Ties

Equal totals are split by higher marks in the domain part, then fewer wrong answers, then age, with the older candidate placed higher.

Check ESIC is in the cycle first

ESIC wasn't in CRE-4, and CRE-5 has no ESIC pharmacist post. Before you plan around "the ESIC Pharmacist exam", read the institute list and Annexure-II of the advertisement that's open.

Apply to the right group

The three streams are three groups, three forms and three fees. The rules barely overlap: allopathic goes up to 32, ayurvedic and homeopathic stop at 25, and the ayurvedic route needs one or three years of service that you can't pick up after the closing date.

Practise in 18-minute blocks

Five sections of 20, 18 minutes each, and a locked section never reopens. That's 54 seconds a question with no borrowing. Leaving hard questions for a final pass doesn't work here, because there isn't one. Practise in timed blocks of twenty with a hard stop.

Answer before each section locks

A wrong answer costs a quarter mark against four for a right one, so a blank is worse than a guess. Fill in the gaps in the last thirty seconds of each section, not of the paper. A question marked for review counts only if it's also saved. Bear in mind that fewer wrong answers is the second tie-break.

Put your time into Pharmacy

It's 320 of the 400 marks and the first tie-break. For the allopathic stream, work from the PCI D.Pharm syllabus. Hospital and Clinical Pharmacy and Community Pharmacy and Management are the work an ESIC pharmacist does, and Pharmacy Law and Ethics covers the Pharmacy Act, 1948.

No previous year papers or model papers are available for the CRE as of now. Neither AIIMS nor ESIC releases them.

The closest official guide is the scheme of examination in Section IX of each CRE advertisement, for example CRE 2025. New cycles are posted on aiimsexams.ac.in; recent ones have opened between June and July.

• AIIMS Examination Section, where you apply
• Common Recruitment Examination, all cycles
• CRE 2025 detailed advertisement (Notice No. 278/2025)
• CRE-5 detailed advertisement (Notice No. 93/2026)
• ESIC recruitments, including Regional Office notices
• ESIC Guwahati: paramedical posts through AIIMS CRE 2025
• AIIMS Notice No. 35/2023, normalisation procedure
• PCI Diploma in Pharmacy syllabus (ER-2020)
• Pharmacy Council of India

Does ESIC hold its own pharmacist exam?

No. ESIC recruits through the AIIMS Common Recruitment Examination. You apply to AIIMS and sit its paper; ESIC takes over at document verification and appointment.

Is there an ESIC pharmacist vacancy right now?

Check the open CRE advertisement. ESIC isn't in every cycle, and CRE-5 has no pharmacist post. The last cycle that had them was CRE 2025, with 249.

Which stream should I apply for?

The one your qualification fits. Allopathic needs a pharmacy degree or diploma and registration under the Pharmacy Act, 1948; ayurvedic needs an ayurvedic pharmacy qualification plus experience; homeopathic needs a homeopathic pharmacy diploma or certificate. Each is a separate application and fee.

How old can I be?

Up to 32 for allopathic, 18 to 25 for ayurvedic and homeopathic, before category relaxation: five years for SC and ST, three for OBC, ten for persons with benchmark disability.

Do I need experience?

Only for the ayurvedic stream: one year after the B.Pharm (Ayurveda), or three after the diploma.

Is there negative marking?

Yes, a quarter of a mark for a wrong answer, against four for a right one.

What is the pay?

Level 5, ₹29,200 to ₹92,300, for all three streams.

Can a vacancy disappear after I qualify?

Yes. ESIC's Guwahati office cancelled candidatures in the 2025 cycle "due to change in vacancy position", and the advertisement allows posts to be added or removed at any time.