It’s story of a person who joined Civil Services 15 years after he started preparing for civil services. And he was doing a job so this while! That is what makes Prem Shankar Pandey exceptional. He failed and failed again. His all permissible attempts at UPSC were consumed by 2015. After UPSC, he started to give state civil exams. But again he was on the losing sides till 2021. But he never gave up. Like Nelson Mandela he said, “I never lose. Either I win or I learn.”
His story also exemplified Winston Churchill’s best lines that success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. And finally, the entire struggle paid off as now he is going to become SDM after bagging second rank in UPPCS.
Coming from a lower middle class family, this journey was never easy for Prem. But it was his sheer positive attitude and his hard-work that nothings could stop him even after a long thread of failures.
Speaking exclusively with Indian Masterminds, Prem shared his exceptional long and inspiring story.
JOURNEY: FROM AIRFORCE TO SDM
After his class 23, he joined Indian Air Force in 2001 in technical department. He retired from IAF in 2021 as Sergeant.
He started his civil services preparation around 2009. From 2010 to 2015, he gave 6 attempt of UPSC. He cracked prelims of UPSC CSE 4 time and wrote mains exam. But he could not even reach the Interview stage.
When in 2018 UPPCS pattern was changed on UPSC line, he started preparing for UPPCS. In UPPCS-2022, he reached to the Interview round, but could not make it to the final list. He was successful in UPPCS-2023 with rank 20 in his 6th attempt.
Meanwhile he also cracked Review Officer (Samiksha Adhikari) exam in 2021 and is currently posted in Secretariat, Lucknow.
Prem said, “My journey was very long.It had many ups and downs. But I was determined and believed that if I kept working hard, I will be successful sooner or later. This is a happy end to the journey.”
BACKGROUND
He originally belongs to Pratapgarh, but now his family is settled in Prayagraj. His father was a bus conductor in UP Roadways (UPSRTC) and got retired in 2010. His mother is a housewife. He has 3 more brothers.
Prem is married and has a daughter. He said, “I always believe that I have to keep studying. Even when my UPSC attempts finished, I continued my studies as I had belief that I will succeed at last.”
CIVIL SERVICES PREPARATION
It was obviously difficult for him to study along with his job. But he was willing to do it and achieve it. He never joined any coaching for his preparation. But he took online guidance from various sources.
His strategy was studying with the syllabus only. He also suggested that never ever go out of the syllabus, because that would be absolute waste of time for aspirants.
Apart from it, he solved PYQs of prelims and mains both and focussed on revisions as much as he could. For UPPCS, he took help of YouTube videos and telegram for notes.
He said, “I have less time, so i minimized my resources and stuck to the one material for each subject according to the need.”
INTERVIEW
His interview was very formal. He was asked questions from his background, from Air Force to Defense and his current job as review officer.
He was asked some situation and opinion based questions too. Like – If you become SDM, then what would be your priorities? A member asked him that as a SDM, what values you will bring to your job from Defence?
An interesting question was: as a review officer, what difference you find in Civil and Defence organizations? Another member asked him question related to Corruption in bureaucracy?
