3 stages- Prelims, Mains and Interview. The Civil Services Examination is a nationwide competitive examination in India conducted by the Union Public Service Commission for recruitment to various Civil Services of the Government of India, including the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Foreign Service, and Indian Police Service. Also simply referred to as the UPSC examination, it is conducted in three phases - a preliminary examination consisting of two objective-type papers, and a main examination consisting of nine papers of conventional type, in which two papers are qualifying and only marks of seven are counted followed by a personality test.