Strategy Guide

UPSC Drug Inspector Previous Year Papers: What They Actually Cover

Four papers have been publicly recovered so far — 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2023 — with a seven-year gap in between. That gap matters more than the papers themselves: a lot of the law this exam now tests didn't exist yet when three of the four were set.

Year by year

201199 of 100 questions recovered

Oldest recovered paper. Predates the 2019 NDCT Rules, the 2017 Medical Device Rules, and the 2020 Cosmetics Rules entirely — none of that law could appear in it.

See explained 2011 questions →
2015148 of 150 questions recovered

Full-length 150-question format. Still predates NDCT 2019, MDR 2017 and Cosmetics Rules 2020.

See explained 2015 questions →
2016150 of 150 questions recovered

The last paper before a seven-year gap to 2023 — no recovered paper exists for 2017–2022.

See explained 2016 questions →
2023124 of 150 questions recovered

Only recovered paper set after NDCT Rules 2019, MDR 2017 and Cosmetics Rules 2020 existed — the single best guide to how the current law is tested. Recovery is OCR-limited (scanned paper, no text layer), so about 17% of items could not be reliably extracted.

See explained 2023 questions →

How the papers are served here

Question stems and options are reproduced verbatim from the actual papers — that's the point of practising a previous paper. What is never copied is anyone's answer key or commentary: the printed keys in circulation carry known errors with no working shown, so every answer here is independently determined and every explanation is written originally for this site, verified against the actual legal text it's testing, and tagged to the syllabus head it belongs to.

Take a full paper on the mock test page, or browse explained questions on the syllabus pages.

State Drug Inspector papers

Beyond the UPSC papers: real state-PSC Drug Inspector papers, served verbatim with original explanations, same review standard as everything else here.

Practise the current syllabus, not just 2023

Explained questions across all 13 syllabus heads, with real −1/3 marking. Free, no sign-up.