For Naveen Kumar Saini, the journey to AIR 7 in the UPSC CAPF Examination 2025 was not a straight path. It involved repeated attempts at NDA, leaving an engineering degree midway, completing a BA without much interest in the course, and facing setbacks in both the UPSC Civil Services Examination and the CAPF selection process.
But through all these turns, one goal remained the same: wearing the uniform.
Naveen hails from Manpura village in Neem Ka Thana tehsil of Rajasthan’s Sikar district, a region known for its strong connection with the Indian armed forces. He studied up to Class 8 in his village before moving to Jaipur for his higher schooling.
In Jaipur, where competitive examinations such as IIT-JEE and NEET are a major part of student life, Saini also began preparing for JEE. In 2017, he secured admission to the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) through JEE Advanced.
However, college did not turn out as he had expected.
“I got IIST as my college in 2017 through JEE Advanced, but I didn’t like the subject avionics. I wanted aerospace engineering,” Naveen Saini told Indian Masterminds.
His interest gradually shifted back towards the armed forces. Coming from Sikar, he had grown up in an environment where joining the military was a familiar aspiration.
“I thought I would clear NDA easily because I had cleared JEE Advanced,” he says.
High Marks in NDA Written, But SSB Remained a Hurdle
Naveen appeared for NDA multiple times. His written performance was consistently strong, with his scores often ranking among the highest. But the SSB interview became the stage where his attempts ended.
At one point, he was so confident about his written preparation that he expected to clear the NDA in his first attempt. The repeated SSB failures, however, forced him to reconsider his plans.
Since he had left engineering midway, his parents asked him to complete a graduation degree. Naveen subsequently enrolled for a BA at the University of Rajasthan.
“I was not interested in doing that. But in three years, I completed my BA in 2021,” he says.
Even during his graduation, his focus remained on defence examinations. After completing his BA, he made three more serious attempts, again performing strongly in the written examination but failing to convert the interviews.
“So I decided to prepare for UPSC Civil Services because I was not clearing those interviews,” Naveen says.
From UPSC CSE to CAPF
Naveen began preparing for the UPSC Civil Services Examination. In his third attempt, in 2024, he finally cleared the CSE prelims and appeared for the Mains examination.
However, he was also looking for another career option. The pressure of spending several years preparing for competitive examinations was weighing on him.
That was when CAPF became an unexpected opportunity.
Naveen appeared for the UPSC CAPF examination in 2024 without dedicated preparation and still managed to clear the written examination. He subsequently received the interview call for CAPF, even though he did not make it to the CSE interview stage that year.
“I gave the interview, physical, medical, everything, but in the final list I could not make it. I could not get my name because of seven marks only,” he recalls.
That narrow miss changed his approach to the next attempt.
The Strategy That Took Him to AIR 7
For CAPF 2025, Naveen decided that he would build such a strong lead in the written examination that he would not have to depend entirely on his interview score.
He focused intensely on the written examination and adopted a strategy aimed at maximising his score.
The result was remarkable. Naveen secured 232 marks in the CAPF written examination, emerging as one of the highest scorers in the written stage. His strong written performance eventually helped him secure All India Rank 7 in the UPSC CAPF (AC) 2025 examination.
But even after producing an exceptional written score, the interview brought back a familiar challenge.
Facing Questions About Five Years of Setbacks
During the interview, Naveen was repeatedly questioned about his journey since 2021. His NDA failures, his BA marks, the years spent preparing for competitive examinations and his inability to clear earlier interviews all came under scrutiny.
“I was grilled again and again about my failures and what I have been doing since 2021,” he says.
He was also questioned about his comparatively low marks in his BA degree. Naveen explained that his academic priorities during those years were centred around defence examinations.
For Naveen, the interview remains the part of the selection process he considers his weakest area. Yet his journey also demonstrates that a candidate does not necessarily need an exceptional interview score to achieve a high overall rank when the written examination is strong.
“I still feel the interview is my weak point,” he says.
At the same time, his result has given him a different perspective on competitive examinations: a candidate can compensate for an average interview through an outstanding written performance.
Finally, The Uniform He Always Wanted
After years of preparing for NDA, multiple unsuccessful SSB attempts, an unfinished engineering degree, a BA, UPSC Civil Services attempts and a seven-mark miss in CAPF 2024, Naveen Saini has finally reached the destination he had been working towards.
His route was different from what he had originally imagined, but the objective remained unchanged.
“In the end, I will say that I am getting the uniform which I always wanted, but in some other form,” Saini says.
From NDA aspirant to UPSC CAPF AIR 7, Naveen Kumar Saini’s story is less about a perfect preparation journey and more about adapting when the original plan does not work.
His success in the UPSC CAPF 2025 examination came after years of attempts, course corrections and learning from setbacks. Most importantly, it shows that a difficult phase in an aspirant’s journey does not have to define its final outcome. Sometimes, the path to the desired uniform simply takes a different route.
