What the Kharidar exam is
Kharidar is a Non-Gazetted Second Class post in Nepal’s civil service, the entry rung of general, non-technical administrative work in government offices across the country. It is filled through open competition run by the Public Service Commission (Lok Sewa Aayog, लोक सेवा आयोग), the constitutional body responsible for civil service recruitment in Nepal. PSC was established on 15 June 1951 and selects candidates through one or more methods it sets for each exam: an open competitive written examination, an open competitive practical examination, an interview, or any other method the Commission adopts.
PSC does not run one exam a year, it runs many, across every grade and service, and the scale is easiest to see in aggregate. In fiscal year 2081/82 (2024/25), the Commission’s own annual report recorded 190,954 examinees combined across all of its exams: 137,333 in first-phase screening rounds (62,962 women, 74,371 men) and 53,621 in second-phase or main written rounds (17,735 women, 35,886 men). The same year it published 1,513 vacancy notices covering 3,181 posts directly, and gave consent for security agencies and other organised institutions to fill a further 17,492 posts, ultimately recommending 2,592 candidates for permanent appointment. That figure describes the Commission’s full workload, not the Kharidar exam alone, but it is the honest scale against which any single Kharidar notice sits.
Who conducts it and who can apply
The minimum academic requirement for Kharidar is SLC or SEE (the Secondary Education Examination), equivalent to a 10th grade pass, or an equivalent qualification. This is the lowest formal educational bar among PSC’s general administrative exam tiers, in keeping with Kharidar’s position as the entry-level non-technical post; PSC also sets nationality and other conditions in each vacancy notice, and any candidate should read the current notice in full before applying, since exact conditions can be revised between rounds.
The stage by stage process
Kharidar is a two-stage written exam. Stage I is an objective, multiple choice paper worth 100 marks. It is a screening round only: the marks a candidate earns here do not carry forward into final merit, they only decide who is allowed to sit Stage II, and the cutoff to clear Stage I has been reported at 45 marks. Stage II is a subjective, descriptive paper worth 200 marks, and this is the stage whose marks actually count toward the final result. Candidates who clear both written stages then sit a computer skill test and, finally, an interview.
Written papers are set mainly in Nepali, with English terms used in brackets only where clarity requires it, and candidates are generally free to write their subjective answers in either Nepali or English without penalty on PSC papers.
The applicant pool for a single Kharidar notice can be very large. One Kharidar vacancy round from Nepali fiscal year 2081 reportedly drew an unusually high number of applicants, with some estimates put well over 100,000 and as high as roughly 150,000; that number is not an official PSC count and should be read as an estimate rather than a confirmed figure. A more concrete illustration comes from exam centre attendance for that same round: the Jaleshwar centre, which also covered candidates assigned to the Lahan and Birgunj sub-centres, recorded 15,290 examinees, against 2,079 at the Kathmandu centre and 2,870 at the Dang centre. These are regional centre counts, not a national total, but they show how many candidates one Kharidar notice can draw in a single region alone.
How to apply
Kharidar vacancies are advertised and administered through PSC’s own channels at psc.gov.np, and every stage from application to admit card to result follows the process set out in that cycle’s official notice. Application fee, photo and signature specifications, and admit card instructions vary by notice and are not summarised here because no single sourced figure covers every Kharidar round; candidates should always confirm these details against the live notice on psc.gov.np before applying, since PSC revises them between cycles.