About This Syllabus
This syllabus is for the post of Assistant Town Planning Supervisor (Sahayak Nagar Yojana Paryavekshak). The Urban Development and Housing Department, Bihar, in consultation with BPSC, will hold the Bihar Municipal Town Planning Supervisor Cadre Combined Competitive Examination on the basis of this syllabus for direct recruitment (Advertisement No. 07/2026). The exam has two objective papers: one compulsory and one optional. The optional papers are pitched at the level of a Bachelor of Planning/Architecture course of an Indian university, or a PG Diploma in Remote Sensing & GIS (Specialisation in Urban and Regional Studies).
Paper 1: General Studies (Compulsory)
- Current events
- Matters of everyday observation and experience, and knowledge of their scientific aspects
Paper 2 (Optional): Planning
- Fundamentals of urban and regional planning
- Fundamentals of building structures, materials and principles of construction
- Introduction to drawing equipment and media
- Geometric projections: orthographic, isometric and perspective projections of one, two and three dimensional objects
- Evolution of settlements: the city in history; settlement size, pattern and structure as shaped by socio-cultural, economic, military and religious factors; Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman civilisations; town planning in medieval times and Renaissance Europe
- Planning in the post-industrial revolution era: garden city, city beautiful and linear city concepts; contributions of leading masters of planning; socio-economic impacts of urban growth; rural-urban migration
- Theories of urbanisation: concentric zone, sector and multiple nuclei theories and later theories; land use and land value; William Alonso's theory of location and land use
- Forces on buildings: compression and tension, equilibrium of forces, elasticity and Hooke's law, stress-strain relationship, shear force and bending moment
- Building components: beams and columns, RCC structures, steel structures
- Structural materials: brick, timber, stone, cement, lime, glass, RCC, asbestos, paints and varnishes, fibre reinforced plastic (FRP)
- Construction of building elements: foundations and footings, DPC, flooring, sills, lintels, roofing, parapets, coping, cladding, expansion joints, waterproofing of roofs, external wall sections, beams, columns, slabs and retaining walls
- Statistical methods: arithmetic mean, median, mode, geometric and harmonic mean; range, quartile deviation, average deviation, standard deviation; skewness and kurtosis
- Basic architectural design: anthropometrics, human activity and space use, furniture layout of a room, building circulation and flow diagrams, space, form and function
- Architectural space standards and the design of simple residential, commercial and institutional buildings
- Elements of economics: definition and scope, theory of demand and supply, theory of firm production
- Air quality and solid waste management: sources, types and effects of air pollution and solid waste disposal in cities; links with urban industrial processes, land use and transportation; norms, standards, laws, organisations and policies for urban air quality and solid waste management; examples of best practice
- Urban development plan: context of regional plans, types of regional plans and their links with higher and lower order plans
- Constitutional provisions: district planning under the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts, district planning committees and metropolitan planning committees
Paper 2 (Optional): Remote Sensing & GIS (Specialisation in Urban and Regional Studies)
- Fundamentals of urban and regional planning
- Geospatial technologies for urban and regional area analysis
- Analysis of urban resources, services and facilities
- Advanced geospatial technologies for urban and regional studies
- Basics of remote sensing
- Basics of photogrammetry and cartography
- Digital image processing
- Basics of Geographical Information System (GIS)
- Statistics and programming
Eligible Qualifications Listed With the Syllabus
The syllabus PDF ends with a table of eligible qualifications and equivalent courses:
- B.Plan from SPA Delhi, Bhopal, Vijayawada or Mysore, CEPT University Ahmedabad, or Amity University (Noida, Mumbai, Gurgaon)
- PG Diploma in Remote Sensing and GIS (Specialisation in Urban and Regional Studies) from IIRS Dehradun; equivalents listed include PG Diplomas in Remote Sensing and GIS (BHU, IIRS, Jamia Millia Islamia, Central Board of Irrigation and Power), PG Diploma in Geoinformatics (CDAC Noida), Master in Geomatics (CEPT), M.Sc Remote Sensing and GIS (Aligarh University), M.Tech Geoinformatics (Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Pune) and M.Tech in Remote Sensing and GIS (Remote Sensing Applications Centre, Lucknow)
- Master in Town Planning, Regional Planning, Urban Planning, City Planning or Country Planning (CEPT, SPA Delhi, IIT Kharagpur); equivalents listed include Masters in Urban Transport System, Urban Infrastructure, Urban Housing, Industrial Area Planning (CEPT), and Transport Planning, Environment Planning and Housing (SPA Delhi)
Marking Scheme
- Paper 1, General Studies: 100 marks, 2 hours, objective
- Paper 2, Planning or Remote Sensing & GIS: 100 marks, 2 hours, objective
- Total: 200 marks
- The syllabus PDF does not mention negative marking or qualifying marks.
- The department may revise the subjects and syllabus from time to time as needed.
Preparation Pointers
- Both papers carry equal weight (100 marks each), so the General Studies paper counts as much as your specialisation.
- Choose the optional paper that matches your degree: the Planning paper follows a B.Plan/architecture course, while the Remote Sensing & GIS paper follows a PG Diploma in RS & GIS with an urban and regional focus.
- The Planning paper mixes planning theory with building construction, materials, statistics and economics, so revise the construction and structures topics as well.