Daily events and development around us nationally and globally, are the current affairs that we must be aware of and well-read about. In the UPSC IAS exams, the current affairs knowledge has a lot of weightage too. In the written assessment itself, one can easily expect 15 to 20 MCQs related to current affairs.

The study of current affairs is quite open-ended and of great importance in the UPSC exam. As the term ‘current affairs’ is not pre-determined of its timeline, students find it very challenging to understand how to prepare for this particular section.

To simplify the approach, students must follow news and important events that are reported daily. By this, do not confuse yourself with the ‘main headlines’ of your newspaper, but other notable events that are going on nationally and internationally.

Current Affairs for IAS Exam

The current affairs questions and related topics for the UPSC IAS exam are spread across prelims, mains, and even personal interview assessment stages. Thus, if you observe closely, it easily covers more than 50% of the UPSC IAS exam’s curriculum and cannot be ignored at all. The reason behind this is to understand the candidate’s general knowledge and interest in events that affect the progress of a nation and also their critical analysis and decision-making power in a situation given.

Once the student has identified what and which events and news they need to pay attention to, the next important question is ‘how many months of current affairs should they need to study for UPSC IAS exams?’ However, the answer to this question cannot be specifically addressed.As the Current Affairs 2022 will be asked in the exam, therefore, the students should be well aware of all the important events occurring  in India and around the world.

How Many Months of Current Affairs Are Needed to UPSC IAS Exam?

No one has been able to identify exactly how many months or years of current affairs is needed for the exam.It would be helpful to know affairs from the past 2 years to a maximum period of 5 years. But from some candidates’ experience, there were instances of questions being asked from as long as 9 years back! Therefore, there is no practical definite answer or approach to tackling ‘current affair’ matters.

Since we do not have much clarity about how much back data must be referred to for the preparation of the UPSC IAS exams, we need to come up with our strategy to follow.

An important issue of concern is to gather as much knowledge of incidents and events going on, daily that we do not need to be time-bound dependent. Although this may sound easier than to be implemented, it is possible to include it as a routine in UPSC IAS aspiring student life.

That’s where every student’s most trusted learning partner BYJU’s Exam Prep comes to their rescue and helps to achieve their goals by simplifying their preparations into smaller tasks. Here is why Byju’s Exam is the best solution.

Tips to Study Current Affairs for UPSC IAS Exam

  1. Comprehensive News Analysis (CNA): A daily compilation of important news to keep you updated
  2. Daily Video Analysis: Interesting video lectures released on YouTube on a daily basis.
  3. PIB: Another daily collection of press articles on government policies and schemes
  4. UPSC Monthly Magazines and Newspapers: A monthly published magazine in downloadable format, consisting of daily news of the month. Read good quality of newspapers that provided accurate reporting such as The Hindu, The Indian Express.
  5. Issues in News: Discussion of issues with the ongoing news
  6. Current Affairs Quiz: Students can keep track of their current affairs preparation progress by taking this quiz every week or month depending on their requirement. Their assessment shall help them to focus on the area of improvement for better results.
  7. Questions on Current Affairs: A section specifically tailored with IAS Current Affairs Questions for UPSC 2022-23
  8. International Relations This Week: A weekly detailed analysis of international events as analyzed by Prof. Pushpesh Pant

All these and many more reference materials are available on BYJU’s Exam prep website.