Railway AFA LDCE Pattern and Syllabus: 175 Questions, Attempt 150

The 30% LDCE for Assistant Financial Adviser (also called Assistant Divisional Finance Manager, AFA/ADFM, Level 9) is one computer-based paper: 175 questions, of which you answer any 150, in 3 hours, with one mark for a right answer and a third of a mark taken away for a wrong one. You need 90 of 150 to qualify. After that come a medical test, a viva and an assessment of your record of service. This guide sets out the paper exactly as the Railway Board fixed it for AFA, the syllabus heads behind each part, and the places where general Group B pages print the wrong table for Accounts.

Board letters E(GP)2022/2/4 of 28.06.2022, 22.07.2022 and 22.09.2022; East Coast Railway notification of 23.12.2025, para 6.

Read the numbers carefully. 175 questions are set and 150 count. There is no separate "optional section" of 25 questions: you simply stop at 150 attempts and choose which to leave. Of the 40 general-knowledge questions, 15 are on Official Language policy and rules and are marked optional in the letter, which is why the Board clarified in September 2022 that AFA candidates attempt any 150 "including" those 15. In the Accounts department the Official Language block is worth 15 marks in both the 70% selection and the 30% LDCE, while other departments carry 10 in their 70% selection (Board letter of 11.11.2022).

The expected value of a guess is simple arithmetic (ours). With four options and no option ruled out, a guess is right one time in four: +1 × 1/4 − 1/3 × 3/4 = 0 on average, with added risk. Rule out one option and it becomes +1/3 − 1/3 × 2/3 = +0.11; rule out two and it is +0.33. Because only 150 answers count, the real choice is often not "guess or leave blank" but "which 150": a weak guess should not take the place of a question elsewhere in the paper that you are likelier to get right.

The Board's syllabus letter of 07.11.2022 carries a separate syllabus titled "70% Selection and 30% LDCE for Group B post of Assistant Financial Adviser in Accounts Department". East Coast Railway attached it to its 2025-26 notification unchanged. It has seven heads, and it is broader than the three-part mark table: GFR, IT, taxation and other departments' working appear as syllabus heads without a separate question count.

The same annex carries the syllabi for "Establishment Rules" (11 heads) and "Financial Rules" (17 heads) that other departments' papers use. They overlap heavily with AFA work, and several AFA heads name the same subjects, so they are a useful map even though they are not the AFA mark table.

For AFA candidates the practical point (our reading) is that the Financial Rules list reads like an index of the "Financial Justification" and "General Expenditure" questions, and the Establishment Rules list mirrors the professional "Establishment" head. Candidates who passed Appendix-3 will recognise most of it; the sibling guide on the Appendix-3 IREM pattern and syllabus covers that exam.

Two older descriptions still circulate and both are superseded. IREM's paragraphs on two papers with a subjective element describe the pre-2022 zonal exam, and the "Establishment and Financial Rules" table describes other departments. The Board letter of 28.06.2022 also removed the notion of a separate subjective paper: the whole LDCE is objective.

NAIR published the AFA papers of the three sittings it ran: the CBT of 20.11.2022 with its final answer key, the 30% LDCE of 25.06.2023, and the special drive of 04.08.2024. They are linked in the sources below. The 2026 paper, conducted by RRB/Ajmer, had not been published on RRB/Ajmer's Group B page when we checked on 30 September 2026.