AEN LDCE Marks: Deletions, Rescaling and Normalisation at 90/150

The AEN LDCE has one hard number everyone repeats: 90 out of 150 to qualify. What few pages explain is that in 2026 nobody's result was simply "right answers minus a third of the wrong ones". The CBT ran on two dates, some questions were deleted after objections, scores were rescaled to 150, and one of the two date groups was normalised against the other. East Coast Railway published the whole table RRB/Ajmer sent it — every column, for all 352 candidates listed. We rebuilt each step from that table. This guide walks through it, shows where normalisation helped and where it hurt, and gives you a calculator for your own response sheet.

SR notification 29.08.2025; RRB/Ajmer letter 14.05.2026; ECoR marks disclosure.

The ECoR table carries, for each candidate: total questions (175), questions deleted, questions attempted, deleted questions attempted, right, wrong, negative marks, final mark, "final questions after deletion", raw score out of 150, percentile and normalised score out of 150. Read in order, they describe a pipeline.

Two consequences follow from step 4. Attempting a question that is later deleted does not cost you: it simply leaves your count, and the rest is scaled up. And the scaling is not trivial near the line — a final mark of 88.67 with a rescaling denominator of 146 becomes a raw 91.10. That is exactly the candidate the correction above describes: rescaling lifted them over 90, normalisation took them back under it.

In the ECoR table, 134 candidates had four questions deleted and 135 had five (our count). For the four-deletion group, normalised score equals raw score in every row. For the five-deletion group, every score moved. The mean raw scores were almost the same — 55.00 and 54.69 — which is why commentators called the adjustment small. But the adjustment was not a flat addition, and it was not a simple rule either. On average it lifted lower scores and pulled down the middle and upper-middle bands, but not uniformly: the one candidate above 110 gained 2.70, so the top score rose from 115.65 to 118.35.

Around the 90 line the adjusted group lost ground: raw scores in the 80s moved down by 1.78 on average and scores in the 90s by 1.94. Of the 269 candidates present, 19 had a normalised score between 85 and 95 — seven per cent of the room sitting inside a band where two marks decide the outcome (our count). The four-deletion group put 14 candidates above 90 raw and all 14 qualified; the five-deletion group also had 14 above 90 raw, and 13 qualified.

The last two rows describe this one cohort. In ECoR's table every qualifier attempted at least 124 questions, and every qualifier got between 15 and 41 answers wrong. That is descriptive, not an attempt target: it shows what qualifiers did, not what made them qualify. The average candidate lost almost 20 marks to negative marking (58.4 wrong ÷ 3, our arithmetic). Most were further away than that: 194 of the 269 (72%) scored below 70 normalised, more than 20 marks short of 90 (our count).

Qualifying in the CBT is not selection. Written qualifiers are medically examined under para 530(a) of the Indian Railway Medical Manual, and only those declared fit for Group B are called for viva (Board letter E(GP)80/2/8 of 31.10.1991, as cited in the notification). The ECoR panel records that its empanelled candidates were fit "in prescribed medical standard for Group B (Technical) post of AEN". Candidates are called for viva up to five times the vacancies, category-wise (ECoR result letter; the Board letter of 06.03.2023 behind it is reported).

The record-of-service floor is the rule people forget. A strong viva cannot carry a weak record: with 15 of 25 required from record of service, your APARs over the last five years are part of the exam. The old IREM text on the Railway Board site (para 204.5) adds that there is no moderation and that totals of 0.5 or more are rounded up; that text also carries a superseded professional-subject minimum, so treat the page as history.

No all-India AEN statistics are published officially. One exam-analysis site reports 2,605 and 2,621 AEN candidates on the two dates, with averages of 58.59 and 57.29, and calls the gap negligible (reported). Both things can be true: a 1.3-mark gap in averages is small, and it still moved individual candidates by up to five marks at the tails and about two marks near 90. Trust the official zonal table over any average.

The RRB/Ajmer letter says 60% "relaxation as applicable for the relevant post & category", so 90 is the general qualifying standard. RBE 69/2026 (Board letter No. 2022-E(SCT)1/25/14 of 31.08.2026, read through a staff-news site, reported) sets out the relaxation for the 30% LDCE in non-safety posts: SC/ST candidates "will continue" to qualify in the written test at three fifths of the general mark (54 of 150 on a 90 line, our arithmetic), and need 18 instead of 30 in viva and record of service together, still with at least 15 in record of service. The "best amongst the failed" route in that letter is for the 70% selection, not the LDCE. For safety posts it says there is no provision of relaxation. We did not find an official list that places AEN on either side. The letter also says past cases are not reopened and ongoing selections are not disturbed. It post-dates the 2025-26 panels we read (Southern Railway 05.08.2026, ECoR 25.08.2026). Southern Railway reported 3 SC and 2 ST seats unfilled because there were "no further eligible SC/ST employees"; that sentence alone does not tell us which standard was applied. Ask your zone before you rely on a lower mark.