SSC · Government Exams

SSC CPO Exam Pattern

Both papers were restructured in the notice of 10 September 2026. Every figure here is from that notice — what each paper asks, how the sectional timers run, what a wrong answer costs and which marks decide the post.

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SSC CPO · checked 19 September 2026

The dates, vacancies and rules below are read on the conducting body’s own site and rewritten as each notice appears. The guide beneath carries the full pattern, syllabus, cut-offs and free mock tests.

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30Sep 2026

Next deadline

SSC CPO: the facts that matter now

01
Notice 10 September 2026; applications to 30 September 2026; 2,018 tentative vacancies; Paper 1 tentatively October–November 2026
2026 cycle
02
Staff Selection Commission for Delhi Police and the CAPFs
Conducted by
03
Bachelor’s degree as on the closing date (B.Sc. with PCM or an engineering diploma for SI Fire)
Level
04
Sub-Inspector (Executive) in Delhi Police, Sub-Inspector (GD) in CRPF, BSF, ITBP, CISF and SSB, Sub-Inspector (Fire) in CISF — Pay Level 6…
Posts

Pattern

SSC CPO — SSC CPO SI exam pattern 2026: Paper 1, Paper 2, PST/PET and negative marking

The Sub-Inspector examination has four stages, all mandatory: Paper 1, the physical standard and endurance tests, Paper 2, and the detailed medical examination. Paper 1 shortlists for the physical tests; Paper 2 — set to a higher standard — builds the final merit list and decides the allocation of post and force.

SSC CPO Paper 1 exam pattern 2026. Objective; Parts I–III in Hindi and English; one mark per question; 0.25 marks deducted per wrong answer.
Part	Subject	Questions	Marks	Time
I	General Intelligence and Reasoning	25	25	1 hour, with a 15-minute sectional timer on each part
II	General Knowledge and General Awareness	25	25
III	Quantitative Aptitude	25	25
IV	English Comprehension	25	25
	Total	100	100

SSC CPO Paper 2 exam pattern 2026. Objective; two marks per question; 0.50 marks deducted per wrong answer; the final merit is built from this paper.
Part	Subject	Questions	Marks	Time
I	General Intelligence and Reasoning	20	40	1 hour for Parts I–III, with a 20-minute sectional timer on each
II	General Knowledge and General Awareness	20	40
III	Quantitative Aptitude	20	40
IV	English Language and Comprehension	100	200	1 hour
	Total	160	320	2 hours

How the two papers are scored

Paper 1 shortlists, Paper 2 ranks — Candidates are shortlisted for PST/PET on normalised Paper 1 marks with NCC bonus; final selection and allocation are on normalised Paper 2 marks with NCC bonus and the preference order.
Minimum qualifying marks in both papers — 30 per cent for UR, 25 for OBC and EWS, 20 for all other categories, judged before NCC bonus is added.
Negative marking differs between the papers — 0.25 per wrong answer against one mark in Paper 1; 0.50 against two in Paper 2. The guessing arithmetic is the same in both — a two-option guess gains, a four-option guess loses.
Sectional timers — Fifteen minutes per part in Paper 1; twenty minutes per part in Parts I–III of Paper 2, then a separate hour for English. A part that has closed cannot be reopened.
NCC bonus in each paper — 5 per cent of maximum marks for a C certificate, 3 for B, 2 for A, if claimed in the application and substantiated at verification.

Physical Endurance Test — each event in three chances where the notice allows; qualifying; ex-servicemen exempt.
Event	Male	Female
100 metres	16 seconds	18 seconds
Middle distance	1.6 km in 6.5 minutes	800 m in 4 minutes
Long jump	3.65 m	2.7 m
High jump	1.2 m	0.9 m
Shot put (16 lb)	4.5 m	—

Physical Standard Test. No chest requirement for women.
Category	Height	Chest, unexpanded / expanded
Men, general	170 cm	80 / 85 cm
Men of the listed hill areas, Gorkhas, Dogras, Marathas, Kashmir Valley, Leh and Ladakh, North-Eastern states and Sikkim	165 cm	80 / 85 cm
Men of Scheduled Tribes	162.5 cm	77 / 82 cm
Women, general	157 cm	—
Women of the listed hill areas and regions	155 cm	—
Women of Scheduled Tribes	154 cm	—

For reference, under the previous 200-mark Paper 1 the CPO 2025 cut-offs declared on 30 March 2026 were 128.02 for women and 119.48 for men in the UR category, with 4,320 women and 44,067 men shortlisted for PET/PST. The 2026 Paper 1 is scored out of 100, so those figures indicate the proportion of the paper needed rather than a target score.

SSC CPO syllabus for Paper 1 and Paper 2 Free SSC CPO mock tests on the 2026 pattern SSC CPO previous year papers

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