PO & RMS Accountant Exam Eligibility and the Token-Vacancy Rule

There is no all-India notification for this exam. Since the Directorate's letter A-34012/07/2022-DE dated 02.12.2022, each circle conducts it "as per requirement and availability of vacancies", so the eligibility rules below are applied by your own circle on its own dates. The rules themselves are old and stable: Rule 273 of Postal Manual Volume IV and a handful of Directorate letters that every circle reprints.

As of 30 September 2026, the next sitting we found is Odisha's, on Sunday 1 November 2026, notified on 08.09.2026. Applications had to reach the division by 01.10.2026 and the circle office by 07.10.2026; the circle tells divisions who is permitted by 23.10.2026 and admit cards follow from 26.10.2026.

The letter of 19.02.2019, written to Odisha, settled an old question. Rule 273 speaks of "clerks" and "sorters"; the Directorate said there is no clerk or sorter cadre any more, that the 1990 PA/SA recruitment rules renamed them PA/SA, and that the rule therefore means PA/SA. It also said LSG officials may not appear. That has a practical consequence set out in the merger guide: if you want to be able to man an accounts post later, pass while you are still a PA or SA.

Odisha's 2026 form is a good model because it is complete. It asks for your date of continuous working in the PA/SA cadre, whether you have been declared permanent, the chances already used with roll numbers and years, whether you ever applied for and were granted withdrawal, whether this is your 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th chance, and the language of your answers (Hindi, English or Odia in Odisha). The controlling officer certifies your record. The divisional proforma that forwards it adds whether any vigilance or disciplinary case is pending, whether any punishment is current, and whether any adverse entry appears in the last three years' APARs. Photographs are attested, divisions issue hall permits, and roll numbers are assigned by the circle office.

These two rules are why the vacancy position of your division matters before you prepare. The Directorate repeated them to Gujarat on 26.06.2024, ahead of an exam on 30.06.2024, and Odisha prints them in every notification with an instruction to divisional heads to check the position before issuing hall permits.

By our arithmetic, 22 of Odisha's 26 units have at least one vacancy, and 24 of the 28 are regular vacancies once the four token vacancies are set aside. The four units at 0 are Nil-vacancy units where, reading rule (i), officials who have passed are presumably waiting; the notification does not say so, and the vacancies are "tentative and subject to change". A token unit is one where nobody had passed and the vacancy was Nil.

Rule 273(b) sets the ceiling: the Head of Circle may admit up to ten times the number of vacancies, less the officials who have passed but have not yet been provided for, and selects them "according to seniority"; the decision is final. For Odisha's 28 vacancies that ceiling is 280 before the deduction (our arithmetic). In practice circles appear to call far fewer; Maharashtra's 2026 list, the largest we read, has 233 rows including absentees.

For the next exam in your own circle, watch the circle's page on the India Post site and our alerts page. If you are still an MTS, Postman or GDS, the first step is the PA/SA exam in our PA/SA eligibility guide.