What Agniveervayu is
Agniveervayu is the Indian Air Force's Agniveer entry. Recruitment is run by the Central Airmen Selection Board, and the written stage is an online test taken at a chosen examination centre.
VSVSV is a private learning platform. It is not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by the Ministry of Defence, the Indian Army, the Indian Navy, the Indian Air Force, or any recruiting body. We do not conduct, influence, or take part in recruitment or selection. This article is study material. It is not a recruitment notification. It confers no entitlement of any kind.
Of the three services, this is the one where the structure of the paper matters as much as its content, and a candidate who learns the wrong exam habit will be punished for it on the day.
The three streams
A candidate applies on one of three sides, and the paper follows from that choice. The figures below are read from the candidate instructions published for the 01/2025 Agniveervayu examination, which is the document that carries the per-subject breakdown.
Science only
Sixty minutes in total, across three subjects.
- Physics — questions 1 to 25, carrying 25 marks, in 20 minutes.
- Mathematics — questions 26 to 50, carrying 25 marks, in 20 minutes.
- English — questions 51 to 70, carrying 20 marks, in 20 minutes.
Other than science
Forty-five minutes in total, across two subjects.
- English — questions 1 to 20, carrying 20 marks, in 20 minutes.
- RAGA — questions 21 to 50, carrying 30 marks, in 25 minutes.
Both
Eighty-five minutes in total, across four subjects.
- Physics — questions 1 to 25, carrying 25 marks, in 20 minutes.
- Mathematics — questions 26 to 50, carrying 25 marks, in 20 minutes.
- English — questions 51 to 70, carrying 20 marks, in 20 minutes.
- RAGA — questions 71 to 100, carrying 30 marks, in 25 minutes.
RAGA stands for Reasoning and General Awareness. The standard throughout is 10+2 under the CBSE syllabus.
The feature that changes how you prepare
This is the part to read twice. Under the candidate instructions for the 01/2025 Agniveervayu examination, each subject is timed separately and submits itself automatically.
- The candidate clicks a control to begin the next subject's section.
- When that subject's time runs out, the section submits on its own and the next one becomes available.
- The submit control is disabled for the first five minutes of each section.
The consequence is worth stating plainly. This is not one paper of eighty-five minutes. It is four papers in sequence, each with its own clock. Time saved on a comfortable subject cannot be carried into a hard one. Once a section's clock has run, that section is closed.
Most exam advice a candidate will have absorbed — leave the hard ones, come back at the end, budget your time across the paper — is advice for a single-timer exam. Applied here it is actively harmful. A candidate who banks fifteen minutes on Physics has banked nothing.
Marking
Under the Agniveervayu advertisement for the 01/2027 cycle:
- One mark for each correct answer.
- Nil for a question left unattempted.
- Zero point two five deducted for each wrong answer.
A wrong answer costs a quarter of a mark and an unattempted one costs nothing. That is a real difference from the Army's current position, and it is the sort of clause that changes between cycles. Read the marking clause of the advertisement you are sitting under.
Language
Under the Agniveervayu advertisement for the 01/2027 cycle, the online test is objective and the questions are bilingual in English and Hindi, except for the English paper.
That exception is stated in the advertisement itself and it is logical: an English-comprehension question presented in Hindi would be testing something else. It also means a candidate who is relying on the Hindi version has no Hindi version of one whole section.
Qualifying
Under the Agniveervayu advertisement for the 01/2027 cycle, candidates must qualify in each paper individually, in the science subjects and in the other-than-science subjects, with normalised marks.
Two things follow.
First, a section can end a candidate's attempt on its own, regardless of the total. Evenness matters more than a strong subject.
Second, normalisation cannot be reproduced by anyone outside the recruiting authority. Marks are adjusted to allow for difficulty varying between sittings. Any practice score — ours or anyone's — is a raw score, and a raw score is not the number the recruiting authority works with. We report raw scores and say so.
The physical tests
Under the Agniveervayu advertisement for the 01/2027 cycle, the physical stage runs in two parts, and this is the one place in the register where the physical standards for an Agniveer entry are published in full.
- PFT-I, the 1.6 km run — within seven minutes for male candidates, within eight minutes for female candidates. The timing is relaxed in high-altitude areas.
- PFT-II for male candidates, after ten minutes of recuperation — ten push-ups in one minute, ten sit-ups in one minute, and twenty squats in one minute, with stated breaks between the exercises.
Adaptability Tests I and II follow. We have separate articles on the physical tests across the three services and on preparing for the run safely.
What to do with this
- Decide your stream before you prepare, because the science and other-than-science papers share only English.
- Practise against a per-subject clock, not a single one. A twenty-minute Physics block is the unit that matters.
- Do not save your best subject for last — in this format there is no last.
- Read the current advertisement on the CASB portal. Every figure here is pinned to the cycle it was read from, and the paper structure and the marking clause are read from two different cycles.
Related reading
- How the Agniveervayu Test Runs — Four Clocks, Not One
- The Agniveervayu Syllabus — What Is Published, and What Is Only a Standard
- The Physical Tests by Service — What Is Published, and What Is Not
This article is general guidance written from publicly available recruitment notifications and scheme documents issued by the Indian Army, the Indian Navy, the Indian Air Force and the Ministry of Defence. Eligibility, exam patterns, physical standards, pay and scheme terms are revised with each recruitment cycle, and every figure stated here is pinned to the cycle it was read from. Always confirm current specifics against the live notification on the official portal of the service you are applying to. VSVSV is a private learning platform. It is not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by the Ministry of Defence, the Indian Armed Forces, or any recruiting body. It takes no part in recruitment or selection.