PA/SA LDCE 2026 Vacancies by Circle, and Where Unfilled Posts Go

We found no single national vacancy figure for the PA/SA LDCE in the official documents we checked. Each of the postal circles runs its own exam on a common date and prints its own vacancies in its own notification, usually as “tentative” and “subject to revision”, split by cadre and by category. Some circles leave the table blank and notify the numbers later. This guide gathers the 2026 figures from every circle document we could read, adds the two 2025 results for comparison, and explains what happens to a post nobody in the LDCE fills.

The range is wide. Tamil Nadu’s 357 posts are more than twenty-seven times Jammu and Kashmir’s 13, and just under three in four of all the posts in these six circles are in the Post Office cadre of Postal Assistants (641 of 864, our sum). The Circle and Regional Office cadre is tiny in all six lists (2 to 7 posts), which matters for your preference form: listing it first costs nothing, but with so few posts only a few candidates in each circle can get it.

There are only three vertical categories — UR, SC and ST — because this is a promotion, and reservation in promotion covers SC and ST but not OBC or EWS. Persons with benchmark disabilities have a horizontal reservation of 4% under the DoPT office memorandum of 17.05.2022, which applies to promotion in cadres where direct recruitment does not exceed 75%. PA/SA qualifies, since direct recruitment is 60%. The PwBD posts are then split among the visually handicapped, the hearing handicapped, the orthopaedically handicapped and “others”, and a post not filled in one year can be carried to the next, as Tamil Nadu did with one PwBD (others) post from 2025.

Read these columns as seats reserved inside the totals, not seats added to them. A candidate with a benchmark disability who is selected on a PwBD post is also counted in their vertical category (UR, SC or ST), so the Karnataka total stays 243. The “of 2025” notes show how a PwBD post that nobody could fill last year is carried into this year’s list instead of lapsing. Two practical consequences follow. A PwBD candidate has to reach the PwBD qualifying mark of 33% and is then selected in merit order against the PwBD posts, which is how Odisha’s 2025 list could select an orthopaedically handicapped candidate on 38. And a visually handicapped candidate does not sit the DEST at all, so their selection turns on Paper-I alone.

For everyone else, the useful comparison is posts in your category against the officials in your category who are eligible and likely to sit. The notifications do not print the second number. Your division office does know roughly how many applied, and asking is a reasonable question.

A PA/SA post in the LDCE quota is not lost if no eligible candidate qualifies for it. (A selected candidate who declines is a different case: the next candidate in merit is taken.) The Recruitment Rules 2022 lay down a chain, and each link only gets what the one before could not fill. First, Category A officials through the LDCE. Then Category B officials — those with 8 years of total service counting regular GDS years, or 5 years if their GDS service was on or before 17.06.2022. Then the competitive exam limited to the circle’s Gramin Dak Sevaks, held on the same paper and the same day. Only then does the post go to the next year’s open-market direct recruitment.

The Tamil Nadu example is the clearest. Its 2026 list had 56 ST posts, and the memo says the ST posts were carried to the GDS exam and filled there. For a GDS reading this, that is the whole opportunity: the GDS exam has no vacancy of its own, only what the departmental candidates leave, and those leftovers are largest in categories and cadres where the circle has few eligible officials.

The pattern has been stable: notification in the second week of May, applications through the division within about three weeks, the paper in late June, the DEST in August or September and results soon after. If that holds, the 2027 notifications will appear in May 2027 with vacancies counted for 1 January to 31 December 2027. Applications go to your Divisional Office or controlling unit, not online, and there is no fee in the notifications we read. The division-wise split usually follows later — Karnataka’s notification says so in terms.

From the first table on this page.