The Madhya Pradesh Employees Selection Board has opened its Group-3 Combined Recruitment Exam 2026, bringing together 1040 technical and semi-technical posts — Sub Engineers, Draftsmen, Lab Technicians, and several allied roles — spread across 42 different government offices, development authorities, and public sector bodies. It's genuinely one exam feeding dozens of independent employers, so how you rank your department and post preferences matters just as much as your exam score.

Category-Wise Vacancy Overview

Vacancy numbers can be revised up or down by the recruiting department before results are declared — this is explicitly permitted under the notification and cannot be challenged.

Offices Carrying the Largest Share of Posts

Exam Pattern — Single Paper, 200 Marks

Every question carries 1 mark; each wrong answer deducts 0.25 marks. The exam runs in two shifts on the day — 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM — with different candidate groups allotted to each shift depending on their chosen subject/post combination.

Part-B Technical Paper Groups

Part-B isn't one common paper — it's mapped to 13 distinct technical streams based on the post's educational qualification. Candidates are automatically assigned the paper matching their chosen post(s):

If a candidate holds a qualification that maps to more than one technical stream, they can choose which single stream's paper to appear for — but they remain eligible only for posts whose qualification matches that chosen stream.

Minimum Qualifying Marks

Candidates who clear the minimum qualifying marks but rank above the cutoff purely on merit are automatically placed in the Unreserved list — reserved-category candidates who make the open list this way are not counted against their own category's reserved seats.

Special Rule for Baiga, Saharia & Bharia Tribal Candidates

• Candidates from these three Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups do NOT apply through MPESB's online portal for executive-category posts.
• They must instead send a hardcopy application (using the format in Appendix-2 of the notification) with all required documents directly to the concerned department before the application closing date.
• Any such application mistakenly sent to MPESB will be treated as invalid.
• This exemption does not apply to non-executive posts in these departments — for those, Baiga/Saharia/Bharia candidates must apply as regular ST candidates through the standard online process.

A Few More Rules Worth Knowing

• Live employment registration with an MP government Employment Exchange is mandatory for all posts under this notification.
• A waiting list equal to 15% of the total available posts (based on department-provided numbers) is maintained, valid for one year from result declaration or until the next exam result — whichever comes first.
• Only candidates without any subsisting minority-form marriage disqualification, and without more than two children born after 26 January 2001, are eligible under Madhya Pradesh Civil Services rules.
• Aadhaar-based registration is compulsory, and multi-level biometric verification is required both at entry and during the exam.
• Banned items in the exam hall include mobile phones, calculators, log tables, digital watches, and any rough/loose paper — carrying any of these can lead to disqualification.
• Candidates cannot leave the exam hall at any point after the exam begins, until it concludes.

A structural point worth internalising: because MPESB runs this as one combined exam across dozens of independent recruiting bodies, your final placement depends on three layers stacking together — your normalized percentile score, the exact order you ranked departments and posts in, and the vacancy count each department confirms before results are finalised. None of these can be changed retroactively, so the time to get this right is before you hit final submit, not after.

Disclaimer: Based on MPESB Group-3 Combined Recruitment Exam-2026 notification issued under Madhya Pradesh Junior Service (Common Eligibility) Examination Rules, 2013. Vacancy numbers are provisional and may be revised by individual recruiting departments before the final result. Candidates should verify their complete eligibility, department-wise post details, and updates on the official website esb.mp.gov.in before applying.