Sr. Auditor Incentive Exam Pass Mark: 50%, Minus 0.25 and Round-Up

The four rules and where they come from

What the round-up does

Rounding up to the next whole number means any fractional total is lifted, never cut. On our arithmetic: 50 right and 3 wrong gives 50 minus 0.75, a raw 49.25, recorded as 50, a pass. 50 right and 4 wrong gives exactly 49, recorded as 49, a fail, because 49 is already a whole number and there is nothing to round. So with exactly 50 right answers, up to three wrong answers are free, and the fourth costs you the pass.

The same logic sets the floor at every level of attempts. The rule to remember is that the raw total must be above 49, not 49.5 or 50. Our table below gives the minimum number of right answers for each number of questions attempted.

Two things stand out. First, attempting more questions lowers the accuracy you need: at 100 attempts you need 60 right, 60%, while at 60 attempts you need 52 right, 87%. Second, the extra 10 attempts between 90 and 100 cost you only 2 more right answers at the minimum (58 to 60): of those 10, 2 right and 8 wrong keeps you at the pass. The exam rewards covering the paper, provided your chance of being right on a question beats one in five, the break-even worked out below. All of this is our arithmetic on the circular's rules.

Net score calculator

Should you guess?

The negative mark is a quarter of a mark, so a guess pays on average whenever your chance of being right is better than one in five: 0.2 × 1 equals 0.8 × 0.25. The documents we read do not say how many options each question has. If there are four, a blind guess is right one time in four, which is above the break-even, and ruling out even one option makes it clearly worth answering. Treat that as arithmetic on an assumption, not a rule from the circulars, and remember that a string of bad guesses can cost you a pass at the margin: four wrong answers undo one right one.

How the paper is set and marked now

Two practical consequences follow from the 2026 date sheet. First, Circular 05 of 2026 says candidates "will mark the answer on the question papers itself": there is no separate OMR sheet in the documents we read, so the booklet you hand in is the answer script, and a clear, unambiguous mark on each question matters because someone in another office is reading it against a key, not a machine. Second, the script leaves your office for evaluation elsewhere, and no document we read describes any process for querying a mark, re-totalling or re-evaluation, so the safest reading is to mark cleanly the first time. Both points are our reading of the circular's wording, not instructions from it.

Exam Wing's "Result of IE and SAS" circulars, which appear twice a year, are not results of this exam. They cover the other Incentive Examination, for AAOs and Sr. AOs of A&E offices, held with SAS. If you search for your result there you will not find it.

What results look like

We found result orders from only one office, the Principal Accountant General (Audit), Punjab. They are name-wise lists, so we give counts only, and the counts are ours from the orders.

The "27/04/2022" in the 2024 order's subject line is almost certainly a slip carried over from the 2022 exam, whose date it is; the body of the same order and the revised order both say 29/04/2024. We print both because the order does. One office's counts say little about pass rates elsewhere. The 2023 and 2024 orders list only the successful candidates; the 2025 order is the only one we found that lists everyone, and 19 of the 40 it lists passed (our count). No office publishes a pass percentage.

Not published

What is the pass mark in the CAG Incentive Exam for Senior Auditors?

50 out of 100. The other departmental MCQ exams use 45%, but Circular 01 of 2024 makes the Incentive Exam the exception.

Is there negative marking?

Yes, 0.25 of a mark for each wrong answer. A blank answer scores nothing.

Is 49.25 a pass?

On the rounding rule, yes. Circular 01 of 2024 rounds a fractional total up to the next whole number, so 49.25 is recorded as 50. A raw 49 stays 49.

Is there a section-wise pass mark?

None is stated for this exam. The 50% applies to the paper as a whole.

Who evaluates my answer paper?

Since central conduct, a different nominated IA&AD office, using Exam Wing's answer key.

Where is the result published?

By your own office, as an office order. Exam Wing's IE and SAS result circulars are for the AAO Incentive Exam, not this one.

Are previous year papers available?

No official previous papers or answer keys are published.