When the Constitution came into effect in India on January 26, 1950, so did some institutions that enabled the foundation of a newly democratic nation. One such institution was the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), located at Dholpur House on Shahjahan Road in New Delhi.At the time it was founded on October 1, 1926, under the Government of India Act, 1919, the UPSC was known as the Public Service Commission. Before its current name, between 1937 and January 26, 1950, it was called the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC). On October 1 this year, the highest recruiter of officials to the Indian government will enter its centenary year.AdvertisementA constitutional body, its mandate under Article 320 (outlines the functions of Public Service Commissions) is “to conduct examinations for appointments to the services of the Union and …State respectively”.Today, the UPSC mostly holds written exams (usually the two-tier prelims and mains) and interviews (called personality tests). According to its latest annual report, during 2022-23, the UPSC conducted 15 recruitment exams — 11 for civil services and four for defence services.UPSC’s roots date back to the arrival of the East India Company in India as a “traditional trading concern” in the 1600s. As a “traditional trading concern”, its employees — writers, and junior and senior merchants — were purely mercantile servants, appointed and paid according to their individual merits for decades. In the second half of the 18th century, especially after the Company’s victories in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar in 1764, it realised its new role — to rule India.AdvertisementAround this time, Governor Generals Warren Hastings (from 1773 to 1785), Lord Wellesley (from 1798 to 1805) and Lord Cornwallis (from 1786 to 1793) had reshaped the bureaucracy in British India.By 1858, the character of the Company and its civil servants had changed. To manage a rich empire like India efficiently, the Company had started feeling the need to appoint bureaucrats. Before this, its administrative machinery was essentially based on the structure of the Mughal-era, though the Company kept refining its administrative machinery over time.The Macaulay Committee of 1854 was a huge leap forward in the direction of modern-day bureaucracy. In 1855, a Civil Service Commission came into existence in Britain. By 1858, its jurisdiction was extended to the Indian Civil Service (ICS). At first, recruitments to the Commission were done via the direct route — through a written test and, if needed, an interview. After the First World War (1914-1918), a Staff Selection Board (SSB) was set up to manage this.However, entry to the Commission would remain out of bounds for Indians till 1922. Two years after the ICS exams started being held in India from 1922 onwards, in 1924, the Lee Commission recommended early establishment of a Public Service Commission in the country. From 1926 onwards, the SSB handed over the responsibility of recruitments to this very Public Service Commission. Sir Ross Barker served as its chairperson till 1932.A new proposal under the Government of India Act, 1935, established a Commission for both the federation and each province or group of provinces. By the time this new format — the Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) — rolled out in on April 1, 1937, and Sir Eyre Gordon took over from Sir David Petrie as its chairperson, India was merely a decade away from Independence. Already, the Constitution was being debated and provisions were being framed for an independent recruiter of civil servants in India.When India became independent on August 15, 1947, the FPSC was headed by its first Indian chief, H K Kripalani. After him, R N Banerjee headed the Commission from 1949 to 1955. During his tenure,the Constitution came into effect, as did two change of names — the FPSC was now the UPSC, while the ICS was renamed as the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).The UPSC’s most prestigious examination is the Civil Service Exam (CSE). Nearly 10 lakh candidates apply for the preliminary test (Civil Service Aptitude Test or C-SAT) for recruitment to the three all-India services — IAS, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service — and several other services, called Central Civil Services. In 2022-23, the UPSC received and processed 33.51 lakh applications. Despite the massive number of applicants, the fee for UPSC exams is among the lowest compared to that of several state Public Service Commissions.The UPSC’s Dholpur House headquarters, where it shifted in 1952, too has an interesting backstory. Belonging to the erstwhile Raja of Dholpur, Udai Bhan Singh, it was transferred to the government after Independence, when the Raja decided to merge his state with the Union of India. The Raja was then appointed as the Rajpramukh (similar to a Governor) of the Matsya Union, a state created with the merger of some princely states after Independence. This building continues to be the house of UPSC.most readOver the years, the UPSC instituted several reforms within. It has also disclosed several details related to its exams after Right to Information (RTI) queries were filed, though it resisted the law at first.Various commissions and committees — the first Administrative Reforms Commission of 1966 (headed by Morarji Desai, and later by K Hanumanthaiah), the Thorat panel of 1967 (headed by Lt Gen S P P Thorat), the Kothari panel of 1976 (headed by Daulat Singh Kothari), the Satish Chandra panels of 1989 and 1990, the Alagh Committee of 2001 (headed by Y K Alagh), the P C Hota panel of 2004 and the Arun Nigavekar panel of 2012 — too have shaped the UPSC’s current recruitment pattern.As it enters its centenary year, both Central and state-level service Commissions are struggling to retain their credibility, especially in the wake of malpractice by candidates like Puja Khedkar, who was dismissed as an IAS officer in 2024.The writer is Senior Associate Editor, The Indian Express