Appendix-2 IREM Pass Marks, 50% Exemption and the 10-Chance Ladder

Appendix-2 is a qualifying examination. There is no rank list in the rule and no aggregate: you need 40% of the maximum marks in each paper (30 of 100 for SC and ST candidates, under a Board letter of 2000), and that is all. The rule has stood since the November 1956 examination. Around it sit three other rules that decide how many times you can try: a 50% score that may exempt you from a paper, a ladder of chances that climbs from 5 to 10 with a senior officer's permission at each rung, and a rule that counts a chance as used even if you never sat. The move to computer-based papers in 2025 added one more twist. Exemptions earned in the old written papers do not count any more. This guide takes each rule from the text, prints the conflict where the documents disagree, and ends with a checker.

IREM Vol I Appendix 2 as it stands on the Board's site. The sum 5 + 3 + 2 = 10 chances is our arithmetic on the table in para 4(a).

Para 2 reads: "Forty percent of the maximum marks in each subject will be required to secure a pass." With two papers of 100 marks each, that is 40 in paper (a) and 40 in GRP. Our arithmetic, on the December 2025 format of 1 mark a question and the first 100 attempts marked, is 40 correct answers in each paper. A strong paper does not rescue a weak one: 70 in book-keeping and 38 in GRP is a fail, because there is no aggregate to average them.

Appendix 2 itself prints no relaxation, but a Board letter does. RBE 43/2000 of 13.03.2000 deals with the "10% marks" relaxation for SC/ST employees "in Appendix-IIA & Appendix-IIIA examinations". It says the 10% is reckoned on the total marks, not on the pass mark: "in an examination of 100 marks, if the general candidates have to secure minimum 40 marks to pass, the SC/ST candidates will have to secure 30 marks." Northern Railway's 2025 file for this exam is numbered "Appendix-IIA Exam", which is why we read the letter as covering it. So an SC or ST candidate needs 30 of 100 in each paper.

For PwBD candidates we found no relaxation of the Appendix-2 pass mark in any document we read; Appendix-3's 30% and 35% come from its own letters. The 2025 notifications gave PwBD candidates a scribe where eligible and 40 minutes' extra time, not a lower mark. A candidate site reports that a Board letter of 23.10.2025 said pass marks by category stay "as per the existing Railway Board policy"; we have not seen it. If you are PwBD and not SC or ST, ask your Accounts office before planning around a lower mark.

Para 4(d) says a candidate who fails "but shows marked excellence by obtaining not less than 50% in any subject may be exempted from further examination in that subject in subsequent examinations". Two things follow from the wording. First, "may": it is a power your railway exercises, not a right the marks give you. Second, the IREM carries a paper forward only at 50. A paper you pass at 40 to 49, while failing the other, has no protection in the text.

That second point is where many candidates lose a year. Suppose you score 46 in paper (a) and 35 in GRP. You have cleared 40 in paper (a), but you have failed the examination, and 46 is below the 50 that earns an exemption. On our reading of para 4(d), you sit both papers again next time. The checker below applies this reading. If your office treats a 40-49 paper differently, its order is what counts.

Para 4(a), from ACS 166 of 2004, says that ordinarily no one may take the examination more than five times. The FA&CAO may then allow the 6th to 8th chance, and the General Manager the 9th and 10th. After the 10th, the rule is blunt: "No reference will be made to Board for chance beyond 10th chance." So the ceiling is 10 for most candidates. The count is our sum of the table in the rule.

Para 4(e) is the rule that catches people who decide at the last minute not to sit. "The permission accorded to a candidate to appear in the examination counts as a chance availed of even if the candidate does not actually sit", unless the General Manager receives and accepts an application to withdraw. In 2025 the Nodal Railway set a date for this: withdrawals of candidature closed on 18.11.2025, one day after zones' lists of candidates were due. That was the Nodal Railway's date; Northern Railway asked its own offices for their lists by 14.11.2025, and your office may set its own earlier date. If you are not ready, withdraw through your office before the date it gives you, not on exam morning.

Para 4(f) covers the candidate who wanted to sit but could not. If circumstances beyond your control kept you out, you apply to the General Manager within a fortnight of the last date of the examination, with medical certificates that meet Chapter 5 of the Indian Railway Medical Manual Vol. I, obtained before the examination ended. A certificate obtained afterwards does not meet the rule.

Enter your marks and your chance count. The checker tells you whether the marks pass, whether a paper may be exempted, and who has to allow your next attempt. It uses the rules above and nothing else.

Appendix-3, the next examination, grades very differently: 40% a paper and 45% aggregate on the objective papers (30% and 35% for SC, ST and PwBD), 0.25 off per wrong answer, and an exemption only at 60%, valid for 5 attempts. Appendix-2 is the gentler of the two: no aggregate, no deduction and a lower exemption mark, but a fixed ceiling of ten chances. See the Appendix-3 pass marks guide for its checker. For directly recruited JAAs, whose limit is two chances in three years, read the JAA guide.