Garud Commando Mahaveer Singh Clears RAS Twice After 12 Failed SSB Attempts
Mahaveer Singh, a retired Indian Air Force Garud commando from Sikar district in Rajasthan’s Shekhawati region, has completed an uncommon second career: two successive selections in the Rajasthan State and Subordinate Services Combined Competitive Examination, after a long stretch of unsuccessful attempts to earn a commission through the Services Selection Board.
His own public profile records the outcome with precision. He serves as Assistant Commissioner, State Goods and Services Tax, on the strength of RAS 2023, and secured fifth rank in the ex-serviceman category in RAS 2024. Contemporary reports state that the later result placed him for appointment as Deputy Superintendent of Police in the Rajasthan Police.
The path was neither short nor linear.
From Class 12 to Garud Force
Singh passed Class 12 in 2002 and joined the Indian Air Force the same year. He spent about two decades in uniform and served with the IAF’s special force, the Garud Commandos. News accounts of his career mention United Nations peacekeeping duty of about 14 months in the Congo and rescue work during the 2018 Kerala floods. He retired on 31 December 2022, described in one report as voluntary retirement.
His father worked as a Class-IV employee in the irrigation department. One profile notes that part of Singh’s childhood was spent in Jaisalmer, a detail consistent with a transferable government posting, though his later identification in the RAS coverage is with Sikar.
Twelve SSB attempts, no commission
While still in service, Singh sought a commission. According to Navbharat Times, he appeared before the Services Selection Board 12 times and was not recommended on any occasion. The same report lists attempts in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 through AFCAT and service-entry commissioning routes. That year-by-year tally does not, by itself, add to twelve; the figure of 12 is the published account of his interviews, not an official SSB ledger. News18 and Patrika do not mention the SSB chapter.
The failures did not end his service. They did close one route to an officer’s rank.
Retirement, remarks, and a second start
After leaving the Air Force, Singh faced a familiar civilian scepticism directed at ageing soldiers without a fresh appointment: remarks that he might end up as a security guard. He had already begun online classes in 2020, while still in uniform. Full-time preparation started in January 2023.
The academic gap was large. He rebuilt fundamentals from school texts, including, by his own account, his daughter’s Class 6 books. Study hours described in interviews ran from about 7 a.m. in a library until 9 or 10 p.m. He wrote the examination in English. For optional and general studies material he relied on NCERT, NIOS and IGNOU texts for Sociology; NCERT-based notes for accounting, auditing and management; UPSC-oriented notes and the Rajasthan Economic Survey for economics; newspapers and service periodicals for current affairs; and school-level Rajasthan studies books supplemented by Hukmi Chand Jain’s work from the Rajasthan Hindi Granth Academy.
Two RAS results
RAS 2023 produced the first civil selection: Assistant Commissioner, GST. He did not treat that post as a terminal achievement. He continued preparation and appeared again.
In RAS 2024 he finished fifth among ex-servicemen. That is a category rank, not the statewide first place; the overall toppers of that cycle were other candidates, with the final result declared by the Rajasthan Public Service Commission on 18 April 2026. Reports after the result said he was in line for a Deputy SP posting. One account says he first saw his name on a selection list on the night of 15 October 2025, a date that precedes the April 2026 final declaration and most likely refers to an earlier shortlist or interview stage.
The sequence is therefore documented as follows: IAF enlistment in 2002; roughly 20 years including Garud and UN duty; retirement at the end of 2022; RAS 2023 as Assistant Commissioner (SGST); RAS 2024, ex-serviceman rank 5, with a reported Rajasthan Police DySP allotment.
What he said about failure
Singh has framed the SSB years as a change of route rather than an abandonment of the aim. In the Navbharat Times profile he is quoted as holding that failure does not mean giving up a goal; it means changing the path. The same report says that, when discouraged, he returned to lines from Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Rashmirathi on endurance after long wandering.
The public record does not supply his date of birth, village name, or IAF rank at discharge. It does supply a career that is unusual even among ex-servicemen who enter state services: a special-forces airman who did not become a commissioned officer through SSB, left service in middle age, and then cleared the Rajasthan civil services examination twice in successive years.
