NTA Delhi University NonTeaching Syllabus, Exam Pattern

Stage 1 is a multiple-choice preliminary test used only to shortlist; it carries no weightage in the final assessment. Stage 2 is a descriptive Examination (Main) on which merit is drawn, then a Skill Test for the clerical and library posts, or an Interview for Assistant Registrar.

The preliminary paper, post by post

The biggest block in each clerical paper is the institutional one, 45 of 150, and general competitive preparation does not cover it.

The Examination (Main)

These questions are descriptive. The syllabus section lists the areas.

Marking and language

Four wrong answers cancel one right one in the clerical papers. The qualifying mark is a moving formula; see the cut-off section.

Each R&P advertisement carries a Scheme of Examination with the question count per section and a described syllabus for each one. The detail below is from the scheme published with Advt. No. R&P/311/2024.

Functioning or Administration of Higher Educational Institutions

The biggest block in the clerical preliminary paper, 45 of 150, and DU defines it narrowly: rules and policies concerning the functioning of Higher Educational Institutions in India, their nodal agencies, their financial and administrative functioning, and the Act, Statutes and Ordinances of the University of Delhi.

Act on that last clause. DU's Act, Statutes and Ordinances sit on the University website under About DU, and they are examinable.

The other three preliminary sections

• General Studies or General Knowledge: general science, current events of national and international importance, History of India, the Indian National Movement, the Constitution of India, Indian polity, economy and geography.
• Reasoning, described as General Mental Ability: reasoning, analytical abilities, decision making, data analysis and interpretation.
• General Mathematical Ability: calculations, statistical analysis and commercial mathematics at secondary and higher secondary level.

No English language paper, no banking-style general awareness, no computer theory section. Computers and typing go to the skill test instead.

The descriptive paper

DU spells out both clerical areas. Educational Administration and Management covers the Indian higher education system and its regulatory bodies, recent developments in the field, financial administration including budget formulation and execution, and ICT in the University system. Functional aspects of rules means Fundamental Rules, Supplementary Rules, General Financial Rules, procurement through GeM, pension and grievance handling: named rulebooks, published and finite.

Skill test contents

Qualifications

Neither clerical post takes a fresh graduate. The service must be in a Central or State Government department, a University or (for Assistant) a research establishment, a PSU or autonomous body, or on equivalent pay in a private company or corporate bank with an annual turnover of at least ₹200 crore.

Age relaxation

Age is as on the closing date. The usual Central Government relaxations apply for SC, ST, OBC, PwD and ex-servicemen, and on top of those:

• Up to five years, or completed years of service, whichever is less, for three years of regular service in the same or an allied field in a Government department, statutory or autonomous body, university, affiliated or constituent college, or PSU. Regular service is service in the cadre on a regular basis; contract and daily wages do not count, an ad hoc appointment later regularised does.
• No upper age limit for departmental candidates of the University or its colleges.
• A one-time exemption, irrespective of age, for contract, daily wage or ad hoc staff of the University or its colleges with a year of service; project and outsourced staff are excluded.
• 5 per cent relaxation in the qualifying degree percentage for SC, ST, OBC and PwD.

Category choice costs you

SC, ST, OBC (NCL) and PwD candidates who apply against unreserved vacancies lose both the age relaxation and the cut-off relaxation. And anyone who qualifies only through age relaxation is counted against reserved seats alone, even with UR merit. Decide before you pay.

Certificates

• OBC (NCL): the DoP&T format of OM No. 36036/2/2013-Estt.(Res.) of 30 May 2014 with the clarification of 31 March 2016. Caste and sub-caste must both be in the Central List, or you are treated as UR. It must show you are outside the creamy layer, be digitally verifiable, and for 2025-2026 vacancies issued on or after 1 April 2025.
• EWS: an Income and Assets certificate in the prescribed format, issued on or before the last date and not earlier than 1 April 2025; without a valid one you go to UR.
• PwBD: disability of not less than 40 per cent, on a certificate uploaded with the form. Categories VI, HI, LD and OBD. Reservation is horizontal: anyone may apply against a PwBD vacancy, it goes to a PwBD candidate of that category, and an unfilled one leaves a UR vacancy vacant.
• NOC if you serve in Government or a PSU. Missing the due date cancels your candidature.
• Produce the age relaxation documents again at every stage, even if uploaded.

Senior Assistant and Assistant

1. Preliminary test. 150 multiple-choice questions, 300 marks, 3 hours. Its marks are discarded afterwards.
2. Qualify at the published formula, which is relaxed for SC, ST and PwBD candidates. The cut-off section explains how it is computed.
3. Shortlisting to Stage 2 is by a fixed ratio to vacancies, with every candidate on the qualifying mark included.
4. Examination (Main). Descriptive, 200 marks, 2 hours. This alone produces the merit list.
5. Skill Test. 100 marks, 50 to qualify, and open only to candidates who sat the Main.
6. Merit is drawn only for candidates who appeared for both components. Skip the skill test and there is no merit position, whatever the Main paper scored.

Assistant Registrar

Same two stages, but the second component carries marks of its own:

Only shortlisted candidates who appear for the Main may attend the interview, and the recruitment rule for the post provides for appointment by All India open competition through written test and interview.

Sports Coach and the library group

Sports Coach is selected on a 100-question written test of 200 marks in 2 hours plus a skill test of 100 marks covering physical fitness and the knowledge and application of skills and techniques. Professional Assistant, Semi Professional Assistant and Library Assistant follow the clerical shape with a 300-mark descriptive Main.

Conditions that apply throughout

• All correspondence, including any interview letter, goes only to the email address given in the application form.
• Canvassing in any form disqualifies.
• DU may change the number, category or recruitment mode of the posts, and may decline to fill some or all of them.
• DU may offer the post at a lower level than advertised, or on contract or deputation, depending on qualifications, experience and performance.
• Disputes go to the Delhi courts only, and any addendum or corrigendum is posted on the website alone.

Every post carries a Seventh Central Pay Commission level plus the allowances admissible to the University.

Two conditions sit on the offer. DU may appoint at a level below the one advertised or applied for, or on contract or deputation, depending on the candidate's qualifications, experience and performance. And the vacancy count, category or mode of recruitment may rise, fall or change, with the University free to leave posts unfilled.

The ministerial ladder runs Junior Assistant, Assistant at Level 4, Senior Assistant at Level 6, and the experience rules mirror it exactly: two years as Junior Assistant to reach Assistant, three years in Level 4 to reach Senior Assistant. Direct recruitment into the upper rungs is open, but only to people who have served on a lower one.

Applications are online, in the prescribed form, against a numbered advertisement in the R&P series on du.ac.in, under Work with DU.

The closing date is stated oddly: the date given in the advertisement, or two weeks from the date the advertisement appears in the Employment News, whichever is later. Qualification and experience must be held as on that closing date.

Fee

An incomplete application, or one without the fee, is rejected. Fees are never refunded.

Read all four PDFs, not just the first

DU splits each non-teaching advertisement into four documents, and the one candidates skip is the third:

1. Non-Teaching Vacancy: post codes, pay levels, the category-wise table.
2. Qualifications: essential qualification, experience and age limit per post.
3. Scheme of Examination: the two stages, question counts, marking, cut-off formula, shortlisting ratio and syllabus.
4. General Instructions: fee, age relaxations, certificate rules, standing conditions.

Category, certificate validity dates and the NOC requirement are all settled at this point, and the eligibility section covers them.

The University of Delhi is a central university, with its North Campus at Delhi 110007 and its South Campus at Benito Juarez Marg, South Moti Bagh, New Delhi 110021. Recruitment correspondence is with the Registrar.

Its non-teaching staff are governed by the University Non-Teaching Employees (Terms and Conditions of Service) Rules, and the University's own Act, Statutes and Ordinances are examinable in the recruitment papers.

Who conducts the exam

College posts are separate

DU's colleges advertise their own non-teaching vacancies. Hansraj College, Kirori Mal College, Lakshmibai College, Zakir Husain Delhi College, Kamala Nehru College and many others each issue notices for Junior Assistant, Library Attendant, Laboratory Attendant and similar posts, under their own schemes. Those are college recruitments, and the scheme described here is the University's.

DU's Scheme of Examination names no examination cities. Centres are published with the admit card notification for each stage, on du.ac.in, under Work with DU, along with the admit card generation link.

What the scheme does fix is the sitting itself. The preliminary test is multiple choice, 150 questions in 3 hours for Senior Assistant and Assistant and 100 questions in 2 hours for Assistant Registrar. The Examination (Main) is descriptive, 2 hours for the clerical posts and Assistant Registrar and 3 hours for the library group. Papers are bilingual, English and Hindi, and an answer must stay in one medium throughout. Skill test timing is left to the evaluating experts.

20 minutes extra per hour is allowed to visually impaired candidates, candidates with cerebral palsy and similarly placed PwBD candidates.

Read the 2024 and 2025 rows against the 2021 one: DU advertised, examined and declared results under its own notices while the old advertisement was still in court.

No date has been announced for the fresh advertisement. It will appear on du.ac.in, under Work with DU, and DU posts any addendum or corrigendum to the website alone.

Admit cards come through notifications posted on du.ac.in, under Work with DU, each carrying the generation link for that stage. There is a separate admit card for every stage: under Advt. No. R&P/311/2024 DU issued one for the preliminary test in October 2025 and another for the Stage 2 examination in January 2026.

There is no postal channel. All correspondence goes only to the email address given in the application form.

Carry the documents supporting any age relaxation to every stage, even if they were uploaded earlier, and have the NOC ready if you are serving in government or a PSU. DU also runs a separate certificate upload step between stages, notified on its own, as it did in December 2025.

The notification of 3 September 2026 did more than supersede an old result. The NTA Stage-I examinations for Senior Assistant, Assistant and Junior Assistant stand quashed, the list NTA declared on them stands quashed, and the offer letters of 18 August 2023 for Library Attendant and Laboratory Attendant stand withdrawn. Appointments already made were undone.

Under DU's own scheme, a result is built from the descriptive Examination (Main) alone for the clerical and library posts, or from Main 70 plus Interview 30 for Assistant Registrar. The preliminary marks play no part, and the skill test adds nothing above its qualifying 50.

Results are published on du.ac.in, under Work with DU as a result notification naming the advertisement and the post, one post at a time rather than a single list for the whole advertisement. The Assistant Registrar result under Advt. 311 came out on 15 April 2026.

Document verification comes next, and an NOC is required there from candidates in government or PSU service.

There is no fixed qualifying figure for these posts, and there never can be. The bar in the preliminary test is a formula: 50 per cent of the average score of the top 5 per cent of candidates.

Relaxations are computed on the UR cut-off and apply where vacancies are advertised in that category. The figure depends on how the best candidates did on the day, so nobody knows it beforehand, DU included. A hard paper pulls it down, an easy one pushes it up.

Qualifying is not the same as being shortlisted

Everyone on the qualifying mark is taken, so a list can run past the arithmetic. Applied to Advt. No. R&P/311/2024 this meant roughly 1,205 candidates for the 80 Assistant posts and 705 for the 46 Senior Assistant posts, before ties.

One bar is a fixed number: the Skill Test needs 50 of 100, and failing it ends the attempt however well the Main paper went.

Any cut-off still circulating for the NTA-conducted DU examination belongs to a list the High Court of Delhi has quashed, and was produced by a scheme DU no longer uses.

Material written for the 2021 NTA cycle is training for a paper that no longer exists. Prepare for DU's own scheme.

Each stage has a different target

Most candidates train hardest for the stage that counts least. Flip that.

Mock the preliminary to the real rules

Sit 150 questions in three hours, in the exact section split, scored out of 300 at two marks each with half a mark off for an error. Then rank yourself against everyone else sitting it rather than looking at your raw total, because the shortlist is positional.

Mine the institutional block

Nearly a third of the clerical paper asks about higher education administration, and DU names its own governing documents as source material. They are on the University website, they are finite, and almost nobody arrives having read them. That is where a general aptitude candidate gains ground fastest.

Practise writing, not ticking

The merit paper is descriptive and it runs on named rulebooks: FR and SR, the GFR, GeM procurement, pension, grievance handling, budget formulation and execution, and the regulators of Indian higher education. Write timed answers on them. No MCQ bank builds that skill.

Treat the skill test as the job

Noting and drafting and the Manual of Office Procedure run through both clerical skill tests, and they are the daily work of the grade. For Assistant there is a typing standard as well, which is also part of the essential qualification; practise to it and stop.

Two things to settle before you pay

Check the experience requirement against your own service record, and choose your category deliberately. Applying against an unreserved vacancy surrenders both the age and the cut-off relaxation. See the eligibility section.

DU publishes no previous year question papers for its non-teaching recruitment, no answer keys, no objection window and no mock test.

What it does publish, with each R&P advertisement, is a Scheme of Examination: the section-wise question count, a described syllabus for every section and for the descriptive paper, the marking scheme, the cut-off formula and the shortlisting ratio. That is enough to build a mock to the exact specification, and it appears on du.ac.in, under Work with DU with each new advertisement.

Papers circulating as "DU non-teaching previous year" belong to the NTA-conducted examination the High Court of Delhi has quashed, and were set to a pattern DU has replaced.

• Work with DU, under Advertisement - Departments: every advertisement, examination and admit card notice, interview notice and result. The fresh advertisement appears here.
• Notification No. Estab.-II(i)/Rectt./2026/R-4670, 3 September 2026: cancels Advt. No. Estab.IV/290/2021, quashes the NTA Stage-I examinations and list, withdraws the two offer letters of 18 August 2023, promises a fresh advertisement.
• Scheme of Examination, Advt. No. R&P/311/2024, for Assistant Registrar, Senior Assistant and Assistant: stages, question counts, syllabus, marking, cut-off formula, shortlisting ratio and skill tests.
• General Instructions, Advt. No. R&P/312/2025, for the library, sports and accompanist posts: fee, age relaxations, certificate validity, NOC and the standing conditions.
• Act, Statutes and Ordinances of the University of Delhi, on du.ac.in under About DU. Not a recruitment document, but examinable.

What has happened to the DU non-teaching recruitment NTA conducted?

It has been cancelled. By notification of 3 September 2026, following the judgment of the High Court of Delhi of 2 September 2026 in LPA No. 440/2025, DU cancelled Advt. No. Estab.IV/290/2021 of 23 February 2021.

What about the examinations themselves?

Quashed, along with the list NTA declared on them, for Senior Assistant, Assistant and Junior Assistant.

I got an offer letter in August 2023. Is it still good?

Not if it was for Library Attendant or Laboratory Attendant under that advertisement. Those offers stand withdrawn.

Will there be a fresh recruitment?

Yes. The notification says a fresh advertisement shall be issued in due course. No date has been announced.

Does NTA still run DU's non-teaching exams?

No. DU runs them itself under its R&P advertisement series, publishing its own Scheme of Examination each time.

What is the pattern now?

A preliminary MCQ test that only shortlists and carries no weightage in the final assessment, then a descriptive Examination (Main) that decides merit, then a Skill Test, or an Interview for Assistant Registrar.

How many questions, and what is the negative marking?

150 questions in 3 hours for Senior Assistant and Assistant, 2 marks each with 0.5 off for a wrong answer, out of 300. For Assistant Registrar, 100 questions in 2 hours, 4 marks each with 1 off, out of 400.

What is the cut-off?

50 per cent of the average score of the top 5 per cent of candidates, relaxed 5 per cent for SC and ST and 10 per cent for PwBD on the UR figure. It cannot be known in advance.

How many go to Stage 2?

30 for one post plus 15 for each further post, so 45 for two and 60 for three, with everyone on the qualifying mark included.

Does the skill test count towards merit?

No. It is 100 marks with 50 to qualify. But merit is drawn only for candidates who appeared for both components, so skipping it leaves you with no position at all.

What qualifications do I need?

Assistant: Bachelor's Degree, two years as Junior Assistant or equivalent, and the typing speed. Senior Assistant: Bachelor's Degree and three years as Assistant or equivalent in Level 4. Assistant Registrar: Master's Degree with at least 55 per cent.

Can a fresh graduate apply for Assistant?

No. Two years of prior service is essential, in a University, research establishment, Central or State Government, PSU or autonomous body, or equivalent private employment in a company with a turnover of at least ₹200 crore.

What are the age limits?

Assistant 32, Senior Assistant 35, Assistant Registrar 40, as on the closing date.

What is the fee?

₹1,000 General, ₹800 for OBC (NCL), EWS and female candidates, ₹600 for SC, ST and PwBD. Never refunded.

I am SC but want an unreserved vacancy. Do I keep my relaxations?

No. SC, ST, OBC (NCL) and PwD candidates applying against unreserved vacancies lose both the age and the cut-off relaxation. And anyone eligible only because of age relaxation is considered for reserved seats alone.

Is there extra time for PwBD candidates?

Yes, 20 minutes an hour for visually impaired candidates, candidates with cerebral palsy and similarly placed PwBD candidates.

What language is the paper in?

English and Hindi, and you must answer in one medium throughout.

Where will the fresh advertisement appear?

On du.ac.in, under Work with DU, as four documents: the vacancy table, the qualifications, the scheme of examination and the general instructions.