Postman and Mail Guard Paper-II: 25 Questions on Postal Operations

The common exam of 12 July each year serves three posts at once. Everyone sits Paper-I. Candidates for Postman and Mail Guard also sit Paper-II, the local-language Paper-III, and later a data entry skill test. Paper-II is the only paper built entirely around the Postman’s and the Mail Guard’s own work: delivery, receipts, money orders, mail bags and transit. It is 50 marks out of the 150 on which the Postman merit list is drawn, and it is the paper most guides skip.

This guide lays out the official Paper-II syllabus topic by topic, shows how its three blocks are weighted, and gives you a tracker to work through it. The rest of the pattern (Paper-I, the language paper, qualifying marks) is in our common exam pattern guide; the DEST has its own DEST guide.

Official: DoP letter 17-08/2018-SPN-I dated 05.04.2022, Annexure-I; West Bengal notification of 01.06.2026.

The practical point is that Paper-II carries a third of your merit. The 2026 results of Odisha, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh all rank on Paper-I plus Paper-II combined, with Paper-III and the DEST as qualifying steps. Papers I, II and III are written in continuity, with no break, starting at 10:00. A GDS who applies only for MTS stops after Paper-I; a GDS who ticks MTS as well as Postman sits all three, and the MTS list uses Paper-I alone.

The Post Office Guide is the public rulebook: what the Department promises the sender and the addressee. Paper-II takes five questions from its delivery chapters. The topics are the situations a Postman meets on the beat: an addressee who refuses an article, one who has moved and asked for redirection, a change of address, an article addressed to someone who has died, mail the Department may detain, and the extra services a Postman offers in rural areas. Paper-I also draws on POG Part I; our common exam pattern guide shows how many questions it takes there. Reading these chapters once serves both papers.

Volume VI of the Postal Manual is the Department’s internal rulebook for post office work; Part III is the Postman’s part. It is the largest block, 10 questions, and its topic list reads like a working day: the Head Postman who hands out the beat; the Postman’s Book in which articles are made over; the receipts he takes for articles issued for delivery and the book of receipts for intimations and notices; the instruction to note addresses and to notice damage; collecting postage due before delivery; taking the addressee’s receipt for a registered article; and the special cases where the rules are strictest — delivery to an illiterate addressee or a Pardanashin woman, insured articles and money orders addressed to minors, and payment or delivery to a person of unsound mind (the manual’s word is lunatic). It ends with the duties of the Village Postman.

Those special cases are where questions are easiest to set and easiest to lose, because each has its own procedure for identity, witness or guardian. The syllabus names them one by one; the manual gives the procedure. Learn them from the manual text, not from memory of how your own office does it: an exam question is marked against the manual.

Volume VII covers the mail office and transit side of the Department. Its 10 questions are why the paper suits a Mail Guard at least as well as a Postman: stamps and seals, the portfolio and its contents, stationery, the daily report, the mail abstract, exchange of mails, the Cage TB, how to dispose of mails addressed to a section or mail office, how transit bags are closed, the duties of a Mail Guard or Mail Agent, the final duties before quitting the van or office, and the ‘A’ and ‘B’ orders. A candidate who has only ever worked on delivery will find this block the least familiar, and it carries as many marks as Volume VI Part III. That is our reading of the weights, not an official remark.

Read the density line carefully. Volume VII has fewer topics per question than Volume VI Part III, so each of its topics is more likely to be asked. If you are short of time, that is where a small amount of reading goes furthest. The circles publish provisional answer keys on the day of the exam and final keys a few weeks later: Bihar uploaded its provisional keys for Papers I to III on 12.07.2026 and its final keys on 05.08.2026, and Odisha issued final keys on 21.08.2026. Old keys and papers from your circle are the closest thing to a model paper.

If you are an MTS in a mail office or an RMS unit, turn the order round: Volume VII will be familiar and Volume VI Part III will not. If you are a GDS working as a Branch Postmaster or Dak Sevak, the delivery topics will feel close to your work, but the manual procedures for registered and insured articles are stricter than branch-office habit. Either way, read from the manual and the Guide, and keep the tracker as your checklist.