Checked 29 September 2026. From the CGDA circulars of 11.03.2025 (SAS Rules 2019 (Revised) and syllabus) and 23.06.2025 (Paper III syllabus). No sitting has been announced since September 2023; check the CGDA SAS page before you plan.
The Subordinate Accounts Service (SAS) examination is the departmental test that qualifies Group C staff of the Defence Accounts Department for promotion to Assistant Accounts Officer, a Group B Gazetted post. It is run by the Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) and comes in two parts. This guide is about Part-I: five papers, each of 100 marks, all written on computer as multiple-choice tests. The rules that apply today are the "SAS Rules 2019 (Revised)", issued with the CGDA circular of 11 March 2025 on the approval of the Ministry of Defence (Finance). Many pages online still describe an older scheme with a Preliminary and four Part-I papers; that scheme ended in 2019. ProSyllabus is an independent study site, not part of the Controller General of Defence Accounts or the Ministry of Defence. Every rule here is quoted or summarised from CGDA circulars; CGDA headquarters and your PCDA/CDA decide every individual case.
CGDA circular of 11.03.2025, Annexure A. Official.
Where other pages get this wrong
CGDA SAS Part-I has five papers, including Paper V on quantitative analysis and logical reasoning, and there is no Preliminary.
Commonly published instead: A Preliminary Test followed by four Part-I papers, with no quantitative paper; or a list that stops at Paper IV.
That is the pre-revised scheme in Annexure C to Para 102 of Office Manual Part I. The restructuring circular of 22.03.2019 dispensed with the Preliminary and introduced the quantitative analysis paper, and the 2025 rules keep all five papers. If a guide or a colleague's notes lists four Part-I papers or a Preliminary, it predates 2019.
The five Part-I papers at a glance
Every Part-I paper carries 100 marks, a pass mark of 45, a duration of 2 hours and an exemption mark of 50 per cent. The table gives each paper's title, what the syllabus says about books, and the question format printed in the 2025 text.
| Paper | Title (official) | Books (official) | Format (official) |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | Management in Government including Constitutional and Financial Management Framework | Without books | 100 objective questions; 1/4 of the marks off for each wrong answer |
| II | Principles and Rules of Defence Accounts and Audit | Without books | 100 objective questions; 1/4 negative marking |
| III | Office Procedure and Documentation (new) | Not stated | "100% MCQ basis" on computer; syllabus issued 23.06.2025; no question count or negative-marking line printed |
| IV | Information Technology | Not marked; suggested reading is any relevant book plus OM Part-XI (EDP) | 100 objective questions (was theory and practical); 1/4 negative marking |
| V | Quantitative Analysis and Logical Reasoning | Not marked | 100 objective questions; 1/4 negative marking |
Two things changed in 2025. Paper III is now "Office Procedure and Documentation", replacing "Language Skills and Office Communications", and its syllabus, marked "to be notified separately" in March, was issued by a further CGDA circular of 23 June 2025. That circular is not linked from the CGDA SAS page, so many candidates have not seen it. Paper IV, Information Technology, is now "100% MCQ basis" where it used to have a practical part on a computer. Papers I, II and V are unchanged. The circular says all five papers are to be "conducted 100% in computer based test mode".
Paper I: Management in Government
Paper I is "Management in Government including Constitutional and Financial Management Framework", written without books. The syllabus splits it into two sections by weight.
| Section | Topics (official, summarised) |
|---|---|
| I (40%) | Constitution of India Parts I, V, XII, XIV, XIVA and XX (questions on elections, eligibility, qualifications, procedure and court jurisdiction are excluded); the CAG (Duties, Powers and Conditions of Service) Act, 1971; organisation of the Ministry of Defence, Service Headquarters and allied organisations, including the MoD Annual Report (current year) and Appendices A and B to the Defence Services Estimates; Office Manual Part-I chapters I, IV, VI, IX and X (2014 edition) |
| II (60%) | CCS (CCA) Rules; CCS (Conduct) Rules; RTI Act, 2005; Official Language Act; the POSH Act, 2013; GFR 2017 chapters 1 to 3; FRBM; performance and outcome budgets; the Contingency Fund of India Act (the syllabus gives no year; the Act is of 1950) and Contingency Fund of India Rules, 1952; Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985; Chapter 1 of the 2010 compilation of guidelines on public grievances, and orders on the CPGRAMS website |
The paper has 100 objective questions with multiple-choice answers and the same quarter-mark deduction for each wrong answer. Section II is where most of the marks sit, and it is also the part of the paper that overlaps with the everyday discipline and conduct rules of a government office, so candidates who have handled establishment work tend to find it familiar.
Paper II: Principles and Rules of Defence Accounts and Audit
Paper II is the paper most specific to the Department, again without books. Its reading list is long, and several items are only partly prescribed: the Defence Audit Code 2020, the Defence Accounts Code 2014, the Receipt and Payment Rules 2022 (Rules 14 to 21, 42 and 43), chapters 6, 7, 8 and 15 to 18 of the Introduction to Government Accounts and Audit, the classification handbook, the Pamphlet of Revenue, Debt and Remittance Heads, the list of major and minor heads, only the portion of the Civil Accounts Manual on CID schedule adjustment, Financial Regulations Part I (Volumes I and II), Financial Regulations Part II chapters 1 to 5 and 9 with the appendices the syllabus lists, Office Manual Part-II Volume I chapters III, IV, VI, VII, VIII, IX, XI and XII, GFR chapter 4, the Government Accounting Rules 1990, the Defence Services Estimates and MoD (Civil) budget, the defence pension budget and TDS. It is 100 multiple-choice questions with the quarter-mark deduction.
Paper III: Office Procedure and Documentation
This is the new paper. The March 2025 circular gives its marks (100), pass mark (45), duration (2 hours) and exemption mark (50), and says it is to be conducted "on 100% MCQ basis", like the other four. It prints no question count and no negative-marking line for it. The syllabus followed in the CGDA circular of 23 June 2025 (Annexure A, "SAS Part 1 (CBT) (MCQ)"), with an indicative mark range for each of ten topics. What the March circular also settles is that an exemption earned in the old Paper III (Language Skills) is not valid against the new one.
| Topic (official) | Marks (official) |
|---|---|
| File management: file numbering, file register, linking, part files, transfer, reconstruction and renumbering, movement and urgency grading | 10-15 |
| Dak: receipt, registration and distribution, types of dak, marking disposals, acknowledgement, despatch, dak register | 10-15 |
| Bills: receipt, diary, distribution and processing | 8-12 |
| Cash management product, imprest and cash assignment | 8-12 |
| Reports and returns: periodicity, action when a return is overdue | 8-12 |
| Inspection: purpose and periodicity, teams, questionnaires and reports | 8-10 |
| Registers: opening and maintenance, list of registers, control register | 6-10 |
| e-Office: e-file with notings, correspondence, draft for approval, movement and tracking, inter-departmental file exchange | 6-8 |
| Forms of written communication and their use | 6-8 |
| Records management: categorisation, binding, preservation and disposal of time-barred records | 6-8 |
Study material named in the circular: Office Manual Part I and Part II Volume I of the Defence Accounts Department, and the Central Secretariat Manual of Office Procedure, 2022. The ranges are CGDA's own and overlap; they do not fix an exact split. File management and dak together can carry up to 30 marks (our arithmetic).
Paper IV: Information Technology
Paper IV keeps a broad syllabus and drops the practical. Its topics include the elements of a computer and the Department's own software (the syllabus names Tulip, Dolfin, the New Compilation System, the Defence Travel System, Nidhi, SIFA, Bhawan and Sparsh), big data, networking, operating systems, word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, IT security, relational databases and SQL (select, insert, update and delete), types of encryption, server-side and client-side scripting, and a basic knowledge of artificial intelligence. Suggested reading is any book on the syllabus topics plus Office Manual Part-XI (EDP). The paper is 100 objective questions with the quarter-mark deduction.
Exemptions earned in Paper IV under the earlier pattern are carried forward into the revised pattern, the circular says, even though the paper itself changed from theory and practical to multiple choice.
Paper V: Quantitative Analysis and Logical Reasoning
Paper V has five parts: data interpretation, data sufficiency, reasoning, quantitative ability, and statistics and statistical sampling (the syllabus names monetary unit sampling and discovery sampling among the methods). The reference note says the standard is similar to the Indian banking services examinations for clerical grade and probationary officers. It is 100 objective questions with the quarter-mark deduction. Rule 25 allows a simple calculator in the examination hall; mobile phones are not allowed.
Negative marking: what a wrong answer costs
Papers I, II, IV and V each print the same line: "There will be a Negative marking of ¼ of the marks for each wrong answer." With 100 questions for 100 marks, a question is worth 1 mark and a wrong answer costs a quarter of it (our arithmetic). A skipped question costs nothing. The calculator below shows how the deduction moves a paper across the two lines that matter: 45 to pass and 50 to bank the paper as an exemption.
What does negative marking do to your Part-I score?
Enter how many of a paper's 100 questions you expect to get right and how many wrong. Anything you leave blank costs nothing. The tool applies the printed deduction of a quarter of the marks for each wrong answer and compares the net score with the 45 pass mark and the 50 exemption mark.
Our arithmetic. The rules give 100 marks for 100 questions, which we read as 1 mark a question; they print the quarter deduction for Papers I, II, IV and V. No negative-marking line has been printed for the new Paper III. SC/ST and PwBD relaxations are notified for each sitting and are not applied here.
| Right | Wrong | Blank | Net score (our arithmetic) | Against 45 / 50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60 | 0 | 40 | 60.00 | passes and banks |
| 55 | 20 | 25 | 50.00 | passes and banks, exactly |
| 52 | 20 | 28 | 47.00 | passes, does not bank |
| 50 | 40 | 10 | 40.00 | fails |
The last two rows make the point: fifty correct answers pass the paper only if the wrong answers are kept down. Twenty wrong answers cost 5 marks. On our arithmetic a guess gains on average whenever your chance of being right is better than one in five. With four options, as in the May 2023 papers, even a blind guess is right one time in four, so its expected value is slightly positive (0.25 x 1 minus 0.75 x 0.25 = +0.0625 of a mark). The average hides the risk: a run of wrong guesses can pull a paper that was near 45 or 50 below the line.
How Part-I got here: 2019, 2023 and 2025
| Feature | Pre-revised rules | 2019 rules (used in 2023) | 2025 revised rules |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preliminary | Preliminary Test first | Dispensed with | None |
| Part-I papers | Papers I to IV | Papers I to V on CBT | Papers I to V on CBT, all MCQ |
| Paper III | n/a | Language Skills and Office Communications, 3 hours: 35 MCQ marks + 65 descriptive (precis 20, letter 20, audit report 15, legal communication 10), typed on computer from 2021 | Office Procedure and Documentation, 2 hours, syllabus not published |
| Paper IV | n/a | Theory and practical (practical 70: word processing 25, spreadsheet 25, presentation 20) | 100% MCQ |
| Revaluation | Allowed | Discontinued for CBT papers in July 2023 | None for Part-I (Rule 20) |
The May 2023 Part-I was the first held on computer under the 2019 rules: Papers I and II on 24 May, Paper III on 25 May, and Papers IV and V on 26 May 2023. Its result list, declared on 9 June 2023, is numbered to 4,926 rows (our count of the last serial number). That is a row count, not a pass count: CGDA did not publish how many of those candidates passed, and we do not estimate it.
Language and on-screen practicalities
Rule 23 lets a candidate answer in Hindi or English, but the choice covers a whole paper, not part of one. For the 2023 Part-I, CGDA's FAQs said the language is chosen for each paper at registration and questions then appear only in that language; a different language could be chosen for each paper. The 2023 registration circular said questions and options would be bilingual. Transfers of candidates are frozen from about six weeks before the examination (Rule 24). Part-I answer keys are to be disclosed after the examination (Rule 26).
Previous papers and model answers for Part-I
CGDA keeps an unusually long archive on its SAS examination page. For Part-I it lists question papers for May 2023 (the computer-based sitting), June 2019 with model answers, April 2018 with answers, May 2017, August 2016, May 2015, September 2014, December 2013, April 2013 and a 2007-09 set. It also carries old Preliminary Test papers, model questions with answers for the CBT format (27.10.2021), and a question bank on the Gyan Sudha portal of NADFM. CGDA says its model answers "are illustrative and for general information".
| Material (official) | Best used for | Watch out |
|---|---|---|
| Part-I question papers, May 2023 (CBT) | Format practice for Papers I, II and V; subject-matter practice only for Paper IV | Paper III and Paper IV no longer match the 2025 scheme |
| Model answers, June 2019 Part-I | Checking reasoning on rules questions | Held "in the old/existing syllabus" as a transition sitting |
| Model questions for CBT, 27.10.2021 | Getting used to the multiple-choice style | Written before the 2025 revision |
| Papers from 2013 to 2018 | Rule knowledge that has not changed | Pre-revised pattern; codes and manuals have since been reissued (for example the Defence Audit Code 2020) |
A sensible way to use the archive: work the May 2023 Papers I, II and V under timed conditions with the quarter-mark deduction applied, then use the older papers only for the rule areas that the 2025 syllabus still names. Check each answer against the current code or manual, not the model answer alone.
Before you plan from this page
- Read Annexure A of the 11.03.2025 circular yourself; it is a scanned document and our summary shortens long reading lists.
- Get the Paper III syllabus from the CGDA circular of 23.06.2025 (linked in the sources below); it is not on the SAS page itself. Its study material is office manuals you may already use at work.
- Rule 1 says sittings are preferably held in February and September, but the calendar is decided on need. No sitting has been notified since September 2023.
Sources: CGDA circulars of 11.03.2025, 22.03.2019, 17.04.2023, 20.04.2023, 12.05.2023 and 06.07.2023.
ProSyllabus has no CGDA SAS practice quizzes, so this guide does not point you to any. The official preparation material is on the CGDA SAS page. For the separate SAS of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department, see the CAG SAS papers guide; the two exams share a name and little else.
How many papers are there in CGDA SAS Part-I?
Five: Management in Government, Principles and Rules of Defence Accounts and Audit, Office Procedure and Documentation, Information Technology, and Quantitative Analysis and Logical Reasoning. Each carries 100 marks and lasts 2 hours.
Is there negative marking in CGDA SAS Part-I?
Yes. Papers I, II, IV and V each print a deduction of one quarter of the marks for each wrong answer. No negative-marking line has been printed for the new Paper III.
Is CGDA SAS Part-I online?
Yes. The 2025 rules say all five Part-I papers are held in computer based test mode on the multiple-choice pattern, including the new Paper III ("100% MCQ basis").
Is there a Preliminary for CGDA SAS?
No. The Preliminary was dispensed with by the restructuring circular of 22.03.2019. It belongs to the pre-revised rules.
What is the syllabus of the new Paper III?
CGDA issued it on 23.06.2025: ten topics of office procedure (file management, dak, bills, cash management, registers, reports and returns, inspection, e-Office, forms of communication, records management), with Office Manual Parts I and II Vol I and the Central Secretariat Manual of Office Procedure, 2022 as study material.
Does my old Paper III exemption still count?
No. The circular says exemption marks in the earlier Paper III do not remain valid, because the paper has been replaced. Paper IV exemptions from the earlier pattern are carried forward.
Can I use a calculator in SAS Part-I?
Rule 25 allows a simple calculator. Mobile phones are not allowed.
Can I write Part-I in Hindi?
Yes. Rule 23 allows Hindi or English, chosen for a whole paper. In 2023 the language was chosen per paper at registration.
Where are previous CGDA SAS Part-I papers?
On the CGDA SAS examination page, from May 2023 back to 2007-09, with model answers for some years and model questions for the CBT format.
Does ProSyllabus have CGDA SAS practice questions?
No. Use the official previous papers and model questions on the CGDA site.
Sources
- official — CGDA — Circular AN/SAS/16200/ORDERs/2023/Vol. XIII, 11.03.2025: revised SAS scheme and Annexure A "SAS Rules 2019 (Revised)" with the syllabus (scanned PDF)
- official — CGDA — Circular AN/SAS/16200/ORDERs/2023/Vol. XIV, 23.06.2025: syllabus and study material for Part-I Paper III (Office Procedure and Documentation) and Part-II Paper X (Language Skills and Office Management), Annexures A and B (PDF; not linked from the SAS page)
- official — CGDA — SAS Rules 2019 (MoD(Fin) file 26(1)/C/2017, 20.02.2019): the CBT scheme used for the 2023 sittings (PDF)
- official — CGDA — SAS Rules (pre-revised), Annexure C to Para 102, OM Part I: the old Preliminary + Part-I + Part-II scheme (PDF)
- official — CGDA — Restructuring of SAS Examination (CBT), 22.03.2019: Preliminary dispensed with, no limit on attempts, 50% exemption, "No criteria of aggregate marks" (PDF)
- official — CGDA — Paper III Section B to be typed on computer, 14.09.2021 (PDF)
- official — CGDA — Composition of Paper III Section B and Paper IV practical, 31.03.2023 (PDF)
- official — CGDA — SAS Part-I (CBT) 2023 registration circular, 17.04.2023: cut-off date, four-exam window, withdrawal, bilingual papers, negative marking (PDF)
- official — CGDA — SAS Part-I (CBT) 2023 FAQs, 20.04.2023: language chosen per paper, Hindi phonetic keyboard, transferred candidates (PDF)
- official — CGDA — SAS Part-I (CBT) 2023 dates, 12.05.2023: 24-26 May timetable; SC/ST relaxation up to 5% in an individual paper (PDF)
- official — CGDA — SAS Part-I (CBT) May 2023 result declaration and list, 09.06.2023 (PDF)
- official — CGDA — Revaluation discontinued for CBT papers, 06.07.2023 (PDF)
- official — CGDA — SAS Examination page: circulars, rules, previous papers, model answers (live page)
- official — CGDA — SAS Part-I question papers, May 2023 (CBT) (PDF)
- official — CGDA — Model answers, SAS Part-I June 2019 (PDF)
- official — CGDA — Model questions with answers for SAS (CBT), 27.10.2021 (PDF)
- official — CGDA — Question bank on the Gyan Sudha portal of NADFM, 08.06.2022 (PDF)
official = a document published by the conducting body. reported = a news or coaching site we could not check against an original. Where sources disagree this page says so rather than picking one.
