18 October 2026
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Why Did I Get Less Marks in UPSC? Twitter Thread of ICLS Officer’s Postmortem of Own Result Went Viral

Mr Altap cleared the UPSC CSE in 2019 with all India rank 545 and got ICLS cadre. He has also worked in Intelligence Bureau (IB) as ACIO for 7 years.
Indian Masterminds Stories

The 2020 batch Indian Corporate Law Service (ICLS) officer, Mr. Altap Shaikh posted a twitter thread on why he got less marks and could not make it to the final list, which went viral on social media. Mr Altap cleared the UPSC CSE in 2019 and got ICLS cadre. He has also worked in Intelligence Bureau (IB) as ACIO for 7 years.

Mr Altap’s life is full of inspirations and he never feared of failures. He failed 4 consecutive times in UPSC CSE prelims. After that he passed pre and mains, but again failed in Interview round. He could not also cracked ‘Maharashtra State Services’ Mains exam even after 6 attempts. But perhaps his fate was decided as being ICLS officer through UPSC CSE, so he finally got it with AIR 545 rank in 2019.

Giving 6 reason behind his less marks, in his first tweet, he tweeted, “When I failed to get a place in the Final List of CSE 2019… Reasons for the lesser marks…

1. My first mains after so many prelims failures… For more than a month I was preparing for MPSC exam. Could finally give 60 days for mains…
2. Lesser writing practice

In his second tweet, Mr Altap said, “3. Essay I took litely. Result… below average marks. Essay can make you or break you.

4. Optional – I didn’t write a single test. I wrote the optional paper for the first time in the actual mains examination. That too costed dearly.”

Giving his 5th and 6th reason, Mr. Altap wrote, “5. Not writing GS 3 from the GS 3 angle.
For many answers I was writing-

Social
Economical
Political benefits

6. Taking GS 2 for granted given my optional subject. Hence I lost the main list by 11 marks.

His twitter thread got more than 1.09 lakh views and UPSC aspirants are liking it.

A user replied him, “Thanks for sharing this. It’s very important to learn from other’s mistakes in this exam. I committed similar mistakes in 2022 Mains, and it cost me.”

ABOUT ICLS

Started in 2009, the Indian Corporate Law Service (ICLS) is one of the Group ‘A’ services options available for candidates who have successfully cleared the UPSC Civil Service Examination. The chief responsibility of this service is the implementation of Companies Act, 1956, Companies Act, 2013 and the Limited Liability Partnership (LLP Act), 2008.


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