Did not take the pen debate seriously in earlier attempts.2022 was last my last attempt and after lot of trials settled for Pentel Energel.
It is decent pen which increases speed. Worked fine in the mock tests and could complete mock papers on time.
In the real exam, there was not much issue in the essay paper. However, in the GS 1 the answer sheet provided had pages of low quality which led to heavy imprinting of text on the back side. Lost my complete composure on seeing the flip side of the answer sheet.
Having practiced with one pen only, could not switch to any other pen. Left around 50 marks of paper along with extremely poor representation of the answer script.
Could score only 86 marks. I mailed to UPSC on the same day explaining the issue.
Rest of the GS papers had decent quality of pages and I could complete them all and took it as one off issue.
Same thing happened in the Optional Paper 1 and again could complete only around 200 marks questions scoring only 91 marks in Optional paper 1.
Later even filed RTI asking details of GSM of pages of each paper of the mains exam. But as expected UPSC did just beat around the bush.
The point is choose your pen wisely and test it on different quality of papers because once in the exam hall there is little chance of maneuvering with pens.
