State PSC age limits, compared from nineteen official notifications

"What is the age limit for state civil services?" has no single answer. We read the latest notification from nineteen state commissions — twice, independently, comparing every figure — and the General upper limit runs from 29 to 45 completed years, counted on different dates, with relaxation that usually stops at the state border.

The table gives every limit as the oldest age you can have completed on the counting date. That is not always the number printed: many notices say "35" and mean "must not have reached 35". Where they do, the printed figure is in brackets, and our guide to age-limit wording explains how to tell. Each row describes the commission's latest notification as of October 2026.

The table

Five things the table shows

1. The printed number is often one year above the real limit

Nine of these nineteen notices print an upper age that a candidate must not have reached. Telangana writes "Maximum Age (46 years): An applicant should not be born before 02/07/1978" — for a 1 July 2024 counting date, that is 45 completed years. West Bengal says "not more than 36 years" and, in the same sentence, "born not earlier than the 2nd January, 1988", which makes it 35. Read the birth-date line when there is one: it is the rule, and the age is its summary.

2. The date is different everywhere

Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand count age on 1 July; West Bengal, Odisha, Punjab and Assam on 1 January; Gujarat, Haryana's CET and Karnataka on the closing date of the application. Jharkhand counts the maximum age on 1 August 2022 and the minimum on 1 August 2026 — a press release changed the first after the advertisement was out. Kerala gives birth dates instead. Our cutoff date guide explains the arithmetic.

3. One notification can carry several age limits

APPSC's Group 1 notification lists eleven posts at 18–44 and two police posts at 21–30 and 18–30 in the same table. If a summary gives one number for "the exam", it is describing the most common post — check the row for the post you want.

4. Relaxation is for the state's own candidates

APPSC says it in one line: "BCs, SCs, STs & EWS belonging to other States are not entitled for reservation." Every state here works the same way: an SC candidate from Bihar applying to WBCS is assessed against the General limit. Himachal goes further — relaxation applies "only if a post is reserved for these categories".

5. A qualification can change an age limit

TNPSC Group 4 gives reserved candidates with qualifications above SSLC no maximum age, and defines what that means: "No maximum age limit shall mean that the candidates should not have completed 60 years of age". The same candidate with only an SSLC has a ceiling in the thirties.

How these figures were checked

Each notification was read twice, by two readings that never saw each other, and every figure compared. Where they disagreed — and on the "not reached" question they often did — a third reading settled it from the document's own words, birth-date lines or other language version. Scanned PDFs were checked digit by digit against the page image. Every figure on the exam pages links to the sentence it came from.

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