APPSC Group-II Services Recruitment 2026: 686 Posts in 12 Categories, 150-Mark Screening, 300-Mark Mains & CPT Syllabus

APPSC Group-II Screening Test — 150 marks, OMR

The preliminary Screening Test is an offline, objective-type, OMR-based examination at degree standard. The official scheme provides 150 questions, 150 marks and 150 minutes, covering General Studies and Mental Ability. For every incorrect answer, one-third of the marks allotted to that question is deducted. The examination date has not been fixed in Brief Notification 37/2026.

Official subject allocation

📊 Screening Test: five equally weighted areas

Indian History — 30 marks

Ancient India: Indus Valley Civilisation, the Vedic age, the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism; Mauryan and Gupta administration, socio-economic and religious conditions, art, architecture and literature; Harshavardhana and his achievements.

Medieval India: Chola administration; Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, administration, society, economy, religions, visual arts, languages and literature; Bhakti and Sufi movements; Shivaji and the rise of the Maratha Empire; arrival of Europeans.

Modern India: Revolt of 1857 and consequences, expansion and consolidation of British rule, changes in administration, society and culture, nineteenth- and twentieth-century social/religious reform, phases of the Indian national movement and contributors from different regions, consolidation and reorganisation of India after independence.

Geography — 30 marks

Physical and general geography: Earth and solar system, Earth’s interior, landforms, the structure and composition of the atmosphere, climate, tides, ocean waves and currents. Physical regions, climate, drainage, soils and vegetation of India and Andhra Pradesh; natural hazards, disasters and management.

Economic geography: Geographic distribution of resources; agriculture and allied/agro-based activity; industries, major industrial regions; transportation, communication, trade and tourism in India and Andhra Pradesh.

Human geography: Human development, population characteristics, urbanisation and migration; racial, tribal, religious and language groups, with reference to India and AP.

Indian Society — 30 marks

Social structure: family, marriage, kinship, caste, tribe, ethnicity, religion and women. Social problems: casteism, communalism, regionalism, crime against women, child abuse, child labour and youth unrest. Welfare institutions, public policies and programmes, constitutional and statutory measures for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minorities, backward classes, women, persons with disabilities and children.

Current Affairs — 30 marks

Important contemporary developments and issues at international, national and Andhra Pradesh state levels. No narrower fixed list of months is given in the brief syllabus.

Mental Ability — 30 marks

Reasoning by deduction, induction and abduction; statements and assumptions, arguments, conclusions and courses of action. Number/letter series, odd-one-out, coding and decoding, relationship problems and shape-based problems. Number systems, order of magnitude, averages, ratios, proportions, percentages, simple/compound interest, time and work, time and distance. Interpretation of tables, bar diagrams, line graphs and pie charts.

Interpreting the marking rule

As each preliminary question carries one mark in the published scheme, the stated one-third deduction corresponds to approximately 0.333 mark for each wrong answer. The notice does not prescribe a qualifying score or preliminary cutoff, and no precise test date is stated. The announced detailed notification will clarify the examination schedule.

APPSC Group-II Main Examination — two objective papers, 300 marks

The notified Main Examination is degree-standard, objective type and contains two papers, each with 150 questions, 150 marks and 150 minutes. The combined maximum is 300 marks across 300 questions and 300 minutes. The penalty for an incorrect answer is one-third of the marks prescribed for the question. The brief notification supplies no Main Examination date or centre allocation.

Paper and section structure

The separate syllabus sections each account for 75 marks; the official paper table does not give a separate duration or exact question count to each 75-mark section.

📊 Main Examination: official marks by section

Paper-I, Section A: Social and Cultural History of Andhra Pradesh — 75 marks

Early and medieval Andhra: Prehistoric cultures; the Satavahanas and Ikshvakus, including social, economic, religious, literary, artistic and architectural developments; Vishnukundins, Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi and Andhra Cholas; Telugu language and cultural history. Major and minor dynasties from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries, society, religion, economy, art, architecture and growth of Telugu literature.

Colonial Andhra and nationalist movements: European trading settlements, Company rule and the 1857 uprising in Andhra; British administration, sociocultural awakening, Justice Party/Self-Respect movement, nationalism between 1885 and 1947, socialists, communists, anti-zamindari and peasant movements, nationalist poetry, revolutionary literature, Nataka Samasthalu and women’s participation.

Andhra Movement and state formation: Andhra Mahasabhas, prominent leaders, the 1953 formation of Andhra State, newspapers, press, library movement, folk and tribal cultures. Visalandhra Mahasabha, States Reorganisation Commission, Gentlemen’s Agreement, the formation of Andhra Pradesh and major sociocultural developments from 1956 through 2014.

Paper-I, Section B: Indian Constitution — 75 marks

Constitutional foundations: Historical development, nature and salient features, Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles and their relationship, Fundamental Duties, amendments and the basic-structure doctrine.

Institutions and powers: Legislature, Executive and Judiciary; unicameral and bicameral legislatures, parliamentary executive, judicial review and judicial activism; legislative/executive distribution between Union and States; administrative and financial relations, constitutional bodies, Human Rights Commission, Right to Information, Lokpal and Lokayukta.

Indian federalism and politics: Centre–State reforms, Rajamannar Committee, Sarkaria Commission and M.M. Punchhi Commission; unitary/federal features, political parties and party recognition, electoral reforms, elections and Anti-Defection Law.

Local government: Centralisation and decentralisation; Community Development Programme, Balwant Rai Mehta and Ashok Mehta Committees; Seventy-Third and Seventy-Fourth Constitutional Amendments and their implementation.

Paper-II, Section A: Indian and AP Economy — 75 marks

National income and planning: Indian economy structure, national income concepts and measurement, occupational/sectoral distribution, economic growth versus development, planning approaches, 1991 reforms, financial decentralisation and NITI Aayog.

Money, banking and fiscal economy: Money supply, RBI functions, monetary policy, credit regulation, Indian banking structure and reforms; inflation, fiscal policy, deficits, fiscal responsibility, tax structure, GST, Union Budget, balance of payments and foreign direct investment.

Production sectors: Cropping patterns, productivity, farm credit, marketing, minimum support prices, procurement and distribution; industrialisation, 1991 industrial policy, disinvestment, ease of doing business, industrial sickness, services sector, IT and IT-enabled services.

Andhra Pradesh economy: GSDP and sectoral composition, per-capita income, state tax/non-tax revenue, expenditure, borrowing, interest payments, central assistance, externally assisted projects and recent AP Budget. Agriculture, allied sectors, horticulture, livestock, fisheries, forestry, cooperatives and marketing; industrial development policy, single-window processes, MSMEs, industrial corridors, information technology, electronics, communications and AP IT policy.

Paper-II, Section B: Science and Technology — 75 marks

Missions and applied technology: National science/technology/innovation policy, national missions, emerging technology; Indian launch vehicles and satellites, space missions and applications; DRDO organisation, vision and major technologies, Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme; ICT, Digital India, e-governance, cybersecurity and national cyber policy; nuclear reactors, power plants, radioisotopes and Indian nuclear programme.

Energy: National energy policy, energy capacities and demand, projections, biofuels policy, Bharat Stage norms, nonrenewable and renewable energy resources and capacity, national schemes and achievements.

Ecology and biodiversity: Ecosystem concepts and types, biodiversity hotspots, drivers of loss and conservation, agreements/protocols, CITES, endangered Indian species, biosphere reserves and Indian wildlife conservation law, projects and initiatives.

Waste, pollution and sustainable development: Solid-waste classification, disposal and management; air/water/other pollution, impacts and regulatory alternatives; transgenics, eco-friendly farming technologies and bioremediation. Global warming, climate change, acid rain, ozone depletion and ocean acidification; international climate initiatives and India’s role, SDGs, public-health trends, disease burden, epidemics/pandemics and preparedness, healthcare delivery and public-health programmes.

The breadth of the science and history syllabus is specific to Group-II Notification 37/2026; neither paper should be substituted with an unrelated APPSC General Studies syllabus.

APPSC Group-II Computer Proficiency Test (CPT) — published scheme

Annexure pages 12–16 give a practical Office Automation test with a maximum of 100 marks and a duration of 60 minutes, citing G.O.Ms.No.26, G.A. (Ser.B), dated 24 February 2023. The brief notification annexes this syllabus but does not identify every Group-II post for which CPT is compulsory, so its precise post-wise applicability must be checked in the detailed advertisement. No CPT date has been announced.

Official qualifying marks

These are prescribed qualifying thresholds for CPT, not actual merit-list cutoffs for the Group-II recruitment. They must not be converted to fictitious category-wise final selection cutoffs.

Published assessment components

📊 CPT: five assessed components

The percentages in the official 100-mark assessment pattern are represented here as equivalent marks. Part B also describes preparing a properly formatted model document with tables, pictures/WordArt and mail merge as part of the practical assessment; the notice does not allocate it a separate additional percentage beyond the listed components.

Part A — foundational computer knowledge

Devices and architecture: Components/classification, keyboard, mouse, scanners, touch interfaces, joystick, microphones, cameras, bar-code readers, biometric devices; printers, monitors, speakers, plotters and storage; USB drives, magnetic media, RAM, ROM, control and memory units, arithmetic-logic unit, input–process–output concepts.

Types of software: System software, application software, embedded and proprietary software, open-source software, with their functions and characteristics.

Operating systems: Single-user versus multi-user operating systems, graphical versus character interfaces; Windows desktop interactions, files and folders, file/program managers and peripheral setup. Basic Linux/Mac OS facilities, files/directories, permissions and user management.

Internet and communication: Hardware/software needed for connectivity, internet protocols, IP address, browsers, uploading/downloading, networking steps, email operations, mail lists, the World Wide Web, search and navigation.

Part B — office productivity and hands-on tasks

Office suites and file work: MS Office or equivalent LibreOffice/Apache OpenOffice/NeoOffice, document opening and saving, editing, selection, copying and pasting, drag-and-drop, shortcuts, find and replace, spellcheck, AutoCorrect, menus, toolbars, templates and wizards.

Word processing: Creation and formatting of documents; page layouts, views, columns, headers, footers, page numbering and breaks; fonts, bullets, borders, shading; tables, merge/split cells, sorting and formulas; graphics, shapes/WordArt, charts, hyperlinks, bookmarks, cross-references, footnotes, contents/index tools, mail merge, forms, printing and document protection. The official coverage also lists word-processing macros, keyboard shortcuts and application preferences.

Spreadsheets: Cells, worksheets, navigation, editing, formulas, relative/absolute-type cell references as applicable to the listed cell-reference topic, built-in functions, data sorting and formatting, AutoFill, row/column layout, conditional formatting, print setup, charts, trend lines, data management, subtotals and CSV. Candidates may be asked to construct a data table, calculate results with formulas, merge/split cells and create graphs from supplied numbers.

Presentation software: Standard slide layouts, master slides, text and images, tables, clip art and graphics, formatting, colour schemes, transitions, animation, multimedia, slide timing, slide-show setup and printing. The final practical component expressly requires a PowerPoint-style presentation populated with formatted text, images, tables, transitions and animations.

Assessment distinction: Part A is described as possibly MCQ-based; Part B is computer-based practical work. The notice gives no separately scheduled test date, no guaranteed software version and no statement that a standalone CPT score substitutes for the two main-exam papers.