SPSC Village Level Worker Syllabus 2026 — Every Topic Explained

SPSC Village Level Worker Updated: 01 Sep 2026

Syllabus

Two papers: Paper-I carries General English and General Knowledge for 100 marks in 90 minutes, and Paper-II carries Agriculture and Horticulture for 300 marks in 3 hours. There is negative marking.

Download Official Syllabus PDF

The PDF opens on the official site. Every topic in it is explained in plain language below — you do not have to open the PDF to read the syllabus.

Compiled from the official syllabus · check it against the official link

Which papers you have to sit

The Sikkim Public Service Commission sets two papers for the Village Level Worker post, and every candidate sits both. There is no optional subject and no choice of paper — the split below is fixed for everyone applying under the Agriculture and Horticulture Departments.

The weighting is the thing to notice before you plan any preparation. Paper-II alone carries three times the marks of Paper-I, so the technical subject is where the selection is decided.

Paper	Subjects	Full marks	Time allowed
Paper-I	General English	50 MCQ plus 10 marks Essay Writing and Precis writing — total 60 marks	1 hour 30 minutes (for the whole paper)
Paper-I	General Knowledge	40 MCQ	—
Paper-II	Agriculture, Horticulture	300 MCQ	3 hours

Negative marking, and what it means for guessing

The official syllabus states that the questions are multiple choice and objective type, with negative marking, answered on OMR sheets.

That single line should change how you sit the paper. With 300 objective questions in Paper-II, a habit of guessing every uncertain question will cost you more than it earns. Answer what you know, mark what you can narrow to two options, and leave the rest — and practise filling an OMR sheet before the day, because the sheet itself is where avoidable marks are lost.

What the official document says	What it means on exam day
Multiple choice and objective type	No descriptive answers in the objective sections — the Essay and Precis in Paper-I are the only written portion.
Negative marking	Wrong answers subtract marks. Blind guessing is not free.
Answered on OMR sheets	Answers are machine-read. A mis-shaded bubble is a lost mark even when you knew the answer.

Paper-I: General English — the full official list

The official syllabus gives General English in one line: grammar, composition, comprehension, essay writing and precis writing. Here is what each of those five actually asks of you.

What the syllabus lists	What it means and how to prepare
Grammar	The standard objective grammar of a state paper — tenses, articles, prepositions, subject-verb agreement, voice, narration, error spotting. This is learnable in full, so it is where the surest marks in Paper-I are.
Composition	Sentence and paragraph construction — rearranging jumbled sentences, filling connectors, choosing the correctly built sentence.
Comprehension	A passage followed by questions. The technique matters more than vocabulary: read the questions first, then find the answer in the passage rather than from memory.
Essay writing	Part of the 10 written marks. A short, clearly structured essay — introduction, two or three body points, conclusion — beats a long unstructured one.
Precis writing	The other written portion, and the one most candidates have never practised. A precis compresses a passage to roughly a third of its length in your own words, keeping every main idea and dropping every example. It is a skill, not knowledge — practise five and you will be ahead of most of the hall.

Paper-I: General Knowledge — what is actually in scope

The General Knowledge portion is 40 objective questions. The official wording is narrow and worth reading closely, because it tells you what to leave out as much as what to study.

What the syllabus lists	What it means and how to prepare
General awareness on current affairs	Ordinary current affairs — national and international events, schemes, appointments, sport, awards. A daily newspaper across the months before the exam is the real preparation.
Current events of state and national importance	Sikkim's own current events sit here alongside national ones, and they are the half that candidates from outside the state neglect. Follow state news deliberately.
Important historical events of State and National importance	History, but only the important events — not a full history syllabus. National freedom-movement landmarks, and Sikkim's own historical milestones including its merger with India.

At a glance

Conducting Body	Sikkim Public Service Commission (SPSC)
Post Name	Village Level Worker (VLW)
Department	Agriculture & Horticulture Departments
Official Website	spsc.sikkim.gov.in
State	Sikkim

Paper-II: Agriculture — all nine topics, one by one

Paper-II is where the post is won or lost: 300 marks against Paper-I's 100. The official document lists Agriculture in nine entries. Every one of them is reproduced below in the left column exactly as the Commission words it, with our explanation of what it covers beside it.

What the syllabus lists	What it means and how to prepare
Agriculture: definition, introduction, importance and scope.	The opening definitions. What agriculture is as a discipline, the branches it splits into, and why it matters to a state economy. Short, high-certainty marks — learn the standard textbook definitions word-for-word rather than paraphrasing them.
Organic farming: definition, components, advantages and disadvantages, certification and scope of organic farming.	Sikkim is India's first fully organic state, so treat this as a heavy-weight topic rather than a small one. Know the components (manures, biofertilisers, biopesticides, crop rotation), both sides of the advantage/disadvantage argument, and the certification route — that last part is the one candidates skip.
Classification of crops. Effect of different weather parameters on crop growth and development.	Two things joined. First the classification systems — by season (kharif, rabi, zaid), by use (cereal, pulse, oilseed, fibre, fodder), by life cycle. Then how temperature, rainfall, humidity, light and wind each change growth. Expect questions that name one weather parameter and ask its effect.
Cultivation: Types, Tillage, tilth and its principles and characteristics. Water requirement of crops, methods of irrigation. Weeds and their control methods. Cropping systems, crop rotation, relay cropping, mixed cropping, multi-storied cropping.	The largest single entry in the Agriculture list, and worth the most study time. Keep tillage and tilth clearly apart — tillage is the operation, tilth is the resulting soil condition. Learn irrigation methods with their water efficiency, and be able to tell relay, mixed and multi-storied cropping apart with one example each, because that distinction is exactly what a multiple-choice question tests.
Soil: Types, physical properties and their importance, composition and decomposition. Effect of organic matter on soil and soil fertility.	Soil types and their physical properties — texture, structure, porosity, water-holding capacity — and what each one means for a crop. The organic matter portion links straight back to the organic farming topic above; study the two together and you cover both faster.
Nutrients: Essential plant nutrients and its function and deficiency symptoms in plants.	The seventeen essential nutrients, split into macro and micro. For each of the major ones learn its function and the deficiency symptom it produces — yellowing, stunting, necrosis, and where on the plant it appears first. Deficiency symptoms are the most reliably asked part of this topic.
Extension: definition, objectives, function, principle.	Agricultural extension — the work of carrying knowledge from research to the farmer, which is a Village Level Worker's actual job. Definitions, objectives, functions and principles. Short topic, and directly relevant to the post you are applying for.
Plant protection: classification of insect, pest and disease. Insects, pests and diseases of cereals, pulses and oilseed crops and their management. Integrated pest management and Integrated disease management.	Learn the classification first, then work crop by crop — cereals, pulses, oilseeds — noting the major pest and the major disease of each with its management. Finish with IPM and IDM, where the examinable point is the order of the control methods: cultural, mechanical, biological, and chemical only as the last step.
Natural farming: Definition, principles, crop management, production of bio inputs. Farm machinery/mechanization.	Natural farming and its principles, including how the bio inputs are made. Do not merge it with organic farming — the syllabus lists them separately and the difference between the two is a fair question. Farm machinery is tacked on here: know the common implements and what each one does.

Paper-II: Horticulture — all eight topics, one by one

The Horticulture half of Paper-II runs to eight entries. The post sits under the Agriculture and Horticulture Departments together, so neither half can be treated as the optional one.

What the syllabus lists	What it means and how to prepare
Horticulture: definition, importance, scope and its types.	Definitions again, plus the branches — pomology (fruits), olericulture (vegetables), floriculture (flowers), and the rest. Learn the branch names with their subject, because questions here are usually a straight name-to-definition match.
Classification of horticultural plants.	How horticultural plants are grouped — by climate (tropical, subtropical, temperate), by life span, by use. Sikkim spans several climatic zones, so pay particular attention to the temperate group.
Soil and climatic requirements of horticultural plants, raising and management of nursery.	What each group of plants needs from soil and climate, then the practical nursery work — seed beds, potting mixture, shading, watering, hardening off. Nursery management is close to the real duties of the post, so expect it to be asked in a practical form.
Propagation of plants: Budding, Grafting, Layering. Training and Pruning. Planning and Layout of orchard. Package and practices of cultivation of summer and winter vegetables, fruits and flowers.	The biggest Horticulture entry. Know the types of budding, grafting and layering by name and be able to say when each is used. Keep training and pruning distinct — training shapes the plant, pruning removes parts of it. Orchard layout means the systems: square, rectangular, hexagonal, triangular and contour.
Post harvest management of: vegetables, flowers and fruits, pre-harvest factors, post-harvest factors, maturity index of vegetables and fruits.	What happens after picking, and what decides quality before it. Maturity index is the part to learn precisely — the specific indices used for particular fruits and vegetables, since a question can name a crop and ask for its index.
Processing of: fruits and vegetables. Preparation techniques of jam, jelly, marmalade, pickles and their methods of judging end point.	Processing methods with the actual preparation technique for each product, and — the detail most candidates miss — how the end point is judged for each one. The end-point tests are specific and are exactly the kind of fact a multiple-choice paper likes.
Tools and implements used in Horticulture Garden.	Garden tools by name and use — secateurs, budding knife, grafting knife, pruning saw, dibber and the rest. A small topic that is quick to learn and easy to score.
Plant breeding: Principles of plant breeding, breeding of field and horticultural crops, commercial plant breeding, genetics, methods of Plant Breeding. Plant biotechnology and Tissue culture.	Breeding principles and methods — selection, hybridisation, mutation — with the basic genetics underneath them. Tissue culture is listed here too: know the stages of micropropagation and why it is used commercially.

What the official syllabus does not give — and we will not invent

A syllabus document defines scope. It does not answer every question a candidate has, and the honest thing is to say which ones it leaves open rather than fill them with a confident guess.

For each of the following, the official notification or the Commission's website is the only source worth trusting — not this page and not a coaching sheet.

The exact negative-marking fraction. The document states that there is negative marking; it does not state how much is deducted per wrong answer.
The qualifying marks, and whether a separate cut-off applies to each paper.
The number of questions in Paper-II. The paper is worth 300 marks in objective form; the question count and per-question mark are not stated in the syllabus.
Whether Paper-I and Paper-II are held on the same day or on separate days.
The medium of the question paper.
Any book list. The Commission prescribes a syllabus, not textbooks — a topic list is not a reading list.

Detail	Where the answer actually is
Negative marking value, qualifying marks, question count	The official recruitment notification for the post on the SPSC website.
Exam date, admit card, centre	The SPSC announcements page — dates change, and a date copied onto a third-party site is a date that can go stale without anyone noticing.
Any change to this syllabus	The syllabus PDF itself, linked on this page. It was approved vide Office Order No.402/Adm/Agri dated 05.08.2025.

How to use this syllabus — a practical order of work

This last part is not from the official document. It is our own advice, and should be read as such.

Start with Paper-II, not Paper-I. It carries 300 of the 400 marks, and the two subjects in it take the longest to build.
Inside Paper-II, begin with the two largest entries — Cultivation in Agriculture, and Propagation in Horticulture. Together they cover more of the paper than any other pair.
Give organic farming more time than its one line suggests. Sikkim is India's first fully organic state, and the topic connects to soil, nutrients and natural farming as well.
Study Agriculture and Horticulture together where they overlap — soil, nutrients, plant protection and breeding appear on both sides, and learning them once serves both.
Keep General English for short daily sessions rather than long ones. Grammar is the most reliably scoring part of Paper-I, and it rewards repetition over intensity.
Practise precis writing at least five times before the exam. It is the only part of either paper that is a skill rather than knowledge, and it is the part almost nobody rehearses.
Follow Sikkim state news deliberately, not incidentally. State current affairs and state history are explicitly in scope, and they are where a candidate from outside the state most often loses marks.
Fill a practice OMR sheet under time. With negative marking on a 300-question paper, sheet-filling errors are expensive in a way that no amount of subject knowledge repairs.

Important Links

View Syllabus / Notification SPSC Official Website

FAQ — Your Questions, Answered

Which body conducts this exam?

Sikkim Public Service Commission (SPSC)

Which post is this for?

Village Level Worker (VLW)

Which department is this recruitment for?

Agriculture & Horticulture Departments

What is the official website for this recruitment?

spsc.sikkim.gov.in

Official source: Official PDF ↗. Always confirm on the official website before acting on it.