Survey, translation and Telugu: the conventional papers

Not everything went online. When TGPSC moved the departmental tests to objective CBTs around 2022, three papers stayed conventional — pen, paper and OMR-attached answer booklets — because what they test cannot be reduced to multiple choice: reading a survey record, translating a document, writing and speaking Telugu. Between them they also carry the sharpest personal consequences of the whole slate, because one of them reaches your increments.

Division-D: Principles of Revenue Survey (Higher Standard)

This paper does not live in the May/November departmental sessions at all. It sits in the Half-Yearly Examinations — the March and September terms TGPSC runs for probationers of the All-India and State Civil and Police Services — and it has no departmental-test paper code; you apply through the Half-Yearly notification. TGPSC’s own instructions put the Deputy Collector’s position in one sentence: “Probationary Deputy Collectors have to pass the test in Division-D – Principles of Revenue Survey by the Higher standard included in the Half-yearly examinations. They need not apply for any other Tests” — that is, this is the only paper you take through the half-yearly stream; everything else stays in the departmental sessions.

There is a gate before the hall: applications for Divisions B and D by the Higher Standard require a certificate of having undergone training in Survey, Settlement and Treasury & Accounts — the same condition IAS probationers meet. In practice this means your district attachment’s survey and treasury stints are not just orientation; the certificate they produce is your ticket to the survey paper, and a probationer who drifts through attachment without it discovers the problem only when the half-yearly application bounces. The paper itself is conventional, and unlike the CBT papers it is available in the chosen language as well as English.

Why a Deputy Collector must know survey by the higher standard is not mysterious: boundary disputes under the Survey and Boundaries Act 1923, encroachment cases that stand or fall on a measurement, the tippan and the chain of the field. The examiner is checking that the officer who will one day decide a survey appeal has actually held the instruments.

The Translation Test (paper codes 19 & 28)

Two descriptive papers, 3 hours each, 100 marks, minimum 40 in each, and — the rule that catches people — both papers must be passed at one sitting. A 55 in one paper and a 35 in the other means writing both again.

• Paper-1 (code 19): translation of an ordinary official document or simple narrative prose from English into the chosen language.
• Paper-2 (code 28): translation from the language into English.

The chosen language may be Telugu, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya or Marathi. For most probationers the choice is Telugu, and the test then doubles as rehearsal for real work: a Deputy Collector spends a career shuttling between an English file and a Telugu petition — the show-cause notice that must be understood by the person it threatens, the panchanama recorded at the spot, the deposition rendered into the enquiry report. Practice with genuine material: take a G.O. and render it into Telugu, take a petition and render it into English, until the register — official, plain, exact — comes naturally in both directions.

The Rule 13 Telugu test

Separate from the Translation Test stands the language test under Rule 13 of the State & Subordinate Service Rules, 1996: every appointee must pass a language test in Telugu within the period of probation. In the departmental-test scheme the Second Class Language Test is paper code 5 — a written Part-A plus viva-voce Parts B to D, all taken at one sitting.

This is the test with teeth. Failing it does not merely extend probation under Rule 13 — it postpones your increments, without cumulative effect, until you pass. Every other test failure costs you time and notional seniority; this one costs pay, month by month, and the words “without cumulative effect” mean the postponed increments do not stack up and arrive together later — the arrears of the delay are simply lost.

One safety valve: under the Second Proviso an exemption is possible at age 45 — and where it applies, the increments withheld for the language test are then released notionally. It is a provision built for late-career promotees; a direct-recruit probationer in their twenties should treat the Telugu test as unavoidable and clear it in the first available sitting.

What to watch in the field

Two calendar traps. First, secure the Survey, Settlement and Treasury & Accounts training certificate during attachment and file it safely — without it you cannot even apply for Division-D, and the next term is six months away. Second, because the Translation Test’s two papers stand or fall together and the Telugu test bundles its written and viva parts the same way, prepare each as one unit: half-ready means writing everything again, and with effectively two chances per test, a one-sitting rule is really a one-mistake rule.