UPSC Mains 2013 GS Paper 4 Q12: model answer
You are heading a leading technical institute of the country. The institute is planning to convene an interview panel shortly under your chairmanship for selection of the post of professors. A few days before the interview, you get a call from the Personal Secretary (PS) of a senior government functionary seeking your intervention in favour of the selection of a close relative of the functionary for this post. The PS also informs you that he is aware of the long pending and urgent proposals of your institute for grant of funds for modernization, which are awaiting the functionary's approval. He assures you that he would get these proposals cleared. (a) What are the options available to you? (b) Evaluate each of these options and choose the option which you would adopt, giving reasons.
What the question wants
List the options of an institute head pressed to select a powerful functionary's relative in exchange for clearing funds, evaluate them and choose one.
How to structure it
Options, evaluation, choice.
- List
- Evaluate
- Choose with reasons
How to think it through
Quid pro quo = corruption (PC Act Section 7, offering/obtaining undue advantage). Options: comply; refuse politely and ignore; recuse; inform panel and keep merit-only; report in writing to Ministry/CVC; tell candidate to apply normally. Choose: merit-based selection, record the call, inform governing body/ministry secretary; do not penalise the candidate if he/she is genuinely best; pursue the fund proposals on merit through regular channels. Also: transparent process (scored rubrics, video recording, external experts).
Model answer
Stakeholders
- Candidates for the post; students; the institute; the functionary and his relative; the PS; me as chairman.
Dilemmas
- Institutional funds vs integrity of selection; personal career safety vs fairness; loyalty to the institute vs duty to merit.
Options
- Oblige the PS; refuse and do nothing more; refuse, record and report; withdraw from the panel.
The PS has offered a trade: a professor's chair for a funding file. Once an institute accepts such a trade, every future appointment has a price.
Options and evaluation
- Oblige the request: funds may come through and modernisation may begin. But a less deserving professor would teach thousands of students for decades, other candidates would be cheated, and I would
be party to a quid pro quo that the Prevention of Corruption Act treats as undue advantage.
- Refuse politely and stay silent: selection stays fair, but the pressure is unrecorded and may return through other channels; the fund file may be quietly punished.
- Recuse myself from the panel: looks clean, but it hands the decision to others under the same pressure and abandons my responsibility as head.
- Refuse, keep a record and inform the proper authority: protects the selection and me, though it may annoy a powerful person.
My choice
- Tell the PS courteously that selection will be strictly on merit and that the relative is welcome to compete like any other candidate.
- Make a note of the call and inform the Chairman of the Board of Governors and the Secretary of the administrative ministry in writing.
- Strengthen the process: external experts on the panel, a scoring rubric fixed in advance, recorded interviews and declared conflicts of interest. If the relative is genuinely the best, he will be selected, and the record will show why.
- Pursue the modernisation proposals on their merits, through the Secretary, with clear justification and timelines, and keep the two matters separate.
A head of institution is a trustee. The funds belong to the public and so does the chair. Neither is mine to trade, and the students deserve the best teacher, not the best-connected one.
Draw: Two boxes, 'selection' and 'funds', with a red cross on the arrow the PS tries to draw between them.
Keywords, cases and data to drop in
quid pro quo, undue advantage, Prevention of Corruption Act, merit selection, recusal, conflict of interest, record the call, Board of Governors, external experts, scoring rubric, trusteeship, institutional integrity.
Where most answers lose marks
- Rejecting the relative outright; the right answer is a fair process, not reverse discrimination.
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Fresh examples from current affairs
Supreme Court: no prior approval under Section 17A needed to probe a bribe demand
In a judgment of 16 October 2026, a Supreme Court Bench of Justices S.V.N. Bhatti and N.V. Anjaria held that investigating a bribe demand by a public servant does not need prior approval under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Asking for a bribe, the court said, is not part of discharging official duties.
UPSC angle: Prelims: Sections 7, 7A, 17A and 19 of the PC Act. · Mains GS-II/GS-IV: honest officers versus accountability.
19 Oct 2026Learn the concept
Question text as printed in the official UPSC Civil Services (Main) question paper. The model answer is original Battle IAS work; use it to learn structure, not to memorise.
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