The UPSC Prelims GS syllabus, mapped to how often each part appears in PYQs
Across 1,000 GS Paper I questions from 2016 to 2025, Economy had the most (18.4 a year), then Polity (17.8), Environment (16.3) and History and Culture (16.2). Geography has doubled since 2019. No subject is safe to skip, and the yearly count swings widely.
Keshav Melnad
PYQ analysis5 min read
The GS Paper I syllabus is seven lines long. It does not say how many questions each line will get, and UPSC does not publish a subject-wise count. So every weightage table you see online is someone's own count, made by sorting each question into a subject.
This post is our count. We took all 1,000 GS Paper I questions from 2016 to 2025, put each one under one subject, and counted. Below are the averages, how much they move from year to year, and what the numbers can and cannot tell you.
Current events of national and international importance.
History of India and Indian National Movement.
Indian and World Geography: physical, social and economic geography of India and the world.
Indian Polity and Governance: Constitution, political system, Panchayati Raj, public policy, rights issues, etc.
Economic and Social Development: sustainable development, poverty, inclusion, demographics, social sector initiatives, etc.
General issues on Environmental ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change, that do not require subject specialisation.
General Science.
Our seven subjects follow these lines closely. History and Culture covers line 2, along with art and culture, which UPSC asks about every year though the syllabus does not name it. Science and Technology covers line 7. The other five match one line each.
How many questions each subject gets
Here is the average per paper over the ten years, with the lowest and highest count in any one year:
Economy: 18.4 a year (lowest 13, highest 24)
Polity and Governance: 17.8 (12 to 25)
Environment and Ecology: 16.3 (10 to 22)
History and Culture: 16.2 (9 to 22)
Science and Technology: 13.0 (10 to 17)
Geography: 10.3 (5 to 17)
Current Affairs: 8.0 (2 to 14)
Keshav Melnad
Prepared for the UPSC Civil Services Examination for six years before building CollectorX on his own. He holds a PhD from IIT Bombay, and his research on Sanskrit astronomical texts is published in peer-reviewed journals.
Average GS Paper I questions per year by subject, 2016–2025, with the range across years. Counted from the CollectorX question bank.
The first four subjects are close together, each at about 16 to 18 questions. Together they make up about 69 of the 100 questions. But no subject is small. Even the lowest, Current Affairs, averages 8 questions, which is 16 marks.
The yearly swing matters more than the average
The averages hide how much a subject moves from one year to the next.
Polity went from 13 questions in 2016 to 25 in 2017, then back to 18 in 2018.
History and Culture had 22 in 2018 and only 9 in 2024.
Environment had 22 in 2016 and 10 in 2025.
A swing of 10 or more questions between two years is normal for most subjects. So a plan that gives a subject less time because "it gets only 12 questions" can go badly wrong in the year it gets 20.
Two trends in the last ten years
Two subjects have moved in one direction over the decade:
Geography has roughly doubled. It averaged 7 questions a year from 2016 to 2019 and 14.5 from 2022 to 2025, with a high of 17 in 2024.
Economy has fallen. It averaged 21.8 a year from 2016 to 2020 and 15.0 from 2021 to 2025.
Current Affairs also dipped in the middle of the decade, to between 2 and 5 questions a year from 2018 to 2021, before rising to 9 to 14 from 2022 onwards.
Ten years is a short series, and UPSC does not explain its choices. Treat these as patterns in past papers, not predictions for the next one.
Why other weightage tables give different numbers
If you compare our numbers with a coaching site's table, they will not match. For example, one popular table puts 30 Current Affairs questions in the 2016 paper, where we count 14, and 27 Environment questions in 2022, where we count 18.
Neither count is "wrong". A question on a new government scheme can be filed under Polity, Economy or Current Affairs. A question on a protected area can be Geography or Environment. Each table makes these choices in its own way, and few say what rule they used.
Our rule is that each question goes under one subject: the subject whose study would let you answer it. A language model suggests the subject and topic for each question, and a person confirms it before the question goes live. Our Current Affairs subject is therefore small. It holds questions that no single subject would prepare you for, such as those on international organisations. Most questions that come from the news are filed under their subject.
What this tells you, and what it doesn't
It tells you that the paper is broad. Every subject brings at least 8 questions on average. Skipping one is a real risk.
It tells you where the bulk sits. Economy, Polity, Environment and History bring about two-thirds of the paper together.
It does not rank topics. We have 517 topics across these 1,000 questions, so most topics appear only once or twice in ten years. Even the most frequent, such as Protected Areas and Indian Fauna, appear 11 times. That is too few to rank topics by count.
It does not include 2026. Our bank covers 2016 to 2025 for now.
It counts every question in each paper. That includes the 8 questions in these years that UPSC later dropped from its final key.
A count like this is a guide for dividing your time, not a list of what to study. The questions themselves are the better guide: solving them shows you how UPSC asks about each subject, not only how often.
Practise by subject
Every count in this post comes from the CollectorX question bank, where each of these 1,000 questions is checked against UPSC's official answer key. In Solo Learn you can practise them by subject, by topic or by year, and see which subjects your marks come from.
Sources
UPSC, Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2024 notice (archived copy) — The GS Paper I syllabus has seven lines: current events; history of India and the national movement; Indian and world geography; Indian polity and governance; economic and social development; environmental ecology, biodiversity and climate change; general science. (accessed 7 November 2026)
CollectorX question bank (aggregate query, 2026-11-07) — Subject counts per year, 2016–2025: 1,000 GS Paper I questions, each filed under one of seven subjects, with every answer from UPSC's official key; 517 topics, 403 of them with at most two questions; 8 questions later dropped by UPSC are included. (accessed 7 November 2026)
