2012

Section 4 of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 lists the powers that State laws must give to the Gram Sabha and the Panchayats.

• Statement 1 is correct. Section 4(m)(iii) requires that they be endowed with the power to prevent alienation of land in the Scheduled Areas and to restore land unlawfully alienated from a Scheduled Tribe.
• Statement 2 is correct. Section 4(m)(ii) vests in them the ownership of minor forest produce, later echoed in the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
• Statement 3 is incorrect because of one word. Section 4(k) makes the recommendation of the Gram Sabha or the Panchayat mandatory before a prospecting licence or mining lease for minor minerals only, and section 4(l) adds the same for concessions by auction; major minerals are governed by the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, with no such veto under PESA. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is the qualifier 'any mineral': remembering that PESA speaks of minor minerals removes (c) and (d), and statement 1, the best known PESA power, then decides between (a) and (b).

An adjournment motion is a Lok Sabha device for drawing the attention of the House to a definite matter of urgent public importance, and it needs the support of fifty members to be admitted. The House then sets aside its normal business to discuss the matter, and because the motion, if carried, amounts to a censure of the government, it is an extraordinary device, not available in the Rajya Sabha.

• Option (a) states this exactly and is correct.
• Option (b) describes questions in Question Hour, through which members seek information from ministers.
• Option (c) describes a cut motion, specifically the token or economy cut, moved against a demand for grant during the budget.
• Option (d) confuses the motion's name with the Speaker's separate power to adjourn or suspend the sitting in case of grave disorder. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is the word itself: knowing that cut motions belong to the budget and questions to Question Hour leaves (a) and (d), and (d) is a disciplinary power, not a motion of members.

The National Biodiversity Authority was set up at Chennai in 2003 under the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, to regulate access to biological resources and associated traditional knowledge and to secure fair sharing of the benefits.

• Statement 1 is correct. Checking biopiracy is its core function: access by foreign persons and entities needs its prior approval under section 3, and it can oppose intellectual property rights granted abroad on resources or knowledge obtained from India.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Research on genetically modified crops is regulated under the Rules of 1989 made under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, through the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation and the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee, not by the Authority.
• Statement 3 is correct. Section 6 bars anyone from applying for an intellectual property right, in or outside India, for an invention based on a biological resource obtained from India without the Authority's previous approval. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is to place GM regulation with the GEAC, which removes (b) and (d), and statement 1 then rules out (a).

The National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 states its constitutional basis in its preamble, which recites the Stockholm Conference of 1972 and the Rio Conference of 1992 and records that Indian judicial pronouncements have construed the right to a healthy environment as part of the right to life under Article 21.

• Statement 1 is therefore correct. The Act also rests on Article 253, on implementing international agreements, but that is not among the options.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Article 275(1) provides grants in aid to States for the welfare of Scheduled Tribes and for raising the level of administration of Scheduled Areas; it concerns tribal welfare finance, not an environmental tribunal.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Article 243A lets a State legislature confer powers and functions on the Gram Sabha; it belongs to the panchayat chapter and is unrelated to environmental adjudication. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is to ask which provision concerns the environment at all: only Article 21, as read by the Supreme Court in cases such as Subhash Kumar, does.

The National Water Mission is one of the eight missions of the National Action Plan on Climate Change, 2008, aiming at conserving water, minimising wastage and distributing it more equitably, with a target of raising water use efficiency by 20 per cent.

• Statement 1 is correct. The mission provides for meeting part of urban water needs through the recycling and reuse of waste water.
• Statement 2 is correct. For coastal cities with inadequate alternative sources it provides for technologies such as low temperature desalination that allow the use of ocean water.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Linking the Himalayan and peninsular rivers belongs to the separate National Perspective Plan of 1980, studied by the National Water Development Agency, not to the mission.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. The mission seeks to regulate and recharge overexploited groundwater; reimbursing every farmer's bore wells and pump sets would run against its purpose. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is the absolute words 'all the rivers' and 'completely reimbursed', which remove (c) and (d), leaving the choice between (a) and (b).

The Directive Principles in Part IV are conventionally grouped as socialistic, Gandhian and liberal intellectual, the Gandhian group reflecting Gandhi's programme of reconstruction.

• Statement 1 is not Gandhian. The uniform civil code of Article 44 is a liberal intellectual principle aimed at a uniform personal law, and Gandhi did not champion it.
• Statement 2 is Gandhian. Article 40 directs the State to organise village panchayats as units of self government, the clearest expression of Gandhi's village swaraj.
• Statement 3 is Gandhian. Article 43 directs the State to promote cottage industries on an individual or cooperative basis in rural areas, reflecting Gandhi's emphasis on khadi and village industry.
• Statement 4 is not Gandhian. The same Article 43 speaks of a living wage, a decent standard of life and full enjoyment of leisure for all workers, but that clause is classified as socialistic, concerned with the rights of labour. The official answer is (b). The trap is that statements 3 and 4 come from the same Article, but the uniform civil code alone removes (a), (c) and (d).

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Article 80(1)(b) provides for representatives of the Union Territories in the Rajya Sabha, and at the date of this paper Delhi had three seats and Puducherry one; the others were unrepresented only because of their small population.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Under Article 329(b) an election to Parliament or a State legislature can be questioned only by an election petition, which the Representation of the People Act, 1951 sends to the High Court, with an appeal to the Supreme Court; disputes on the election of the President and the Vice President go to the Supreme Court under Article 71. The Chief Election Commissioner conducts elections but does not adjudicate disputes.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Under Article 79 Parliament consists of the President and two Houses, so the President is an integral part of Parliament though not a member of either House. With all three statements incorrect, the official answer is (d). The elimination route is statement 3, which removes (b) and (c), and the Delhi seats in the Rajya Sabha then remove (a).

• Statement 1 is correct. Section 40 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 lets a purchaser have food analysed by a food analyst for a fee, and the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 lets a forum have goods tested where a defect is alleged.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Filing was free when the Act began, but the Consumer Protection Rules were amended in 2004 to prescribe fees scaled to the claim, from one hundred rupees upwards, with below poverty line Antyodaya card holders exempt for the smallest claims, so a fee was payable in most cases at the date of this paper.
• Statement 3 is correct. Section 2(1)(b), as amended in 2002, includes the legal heir or representative of a deceased consumer among the complainants. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is the absolute 'no fee is required to be paid', which removes (b) and (d), and statement 3 then separates (c) from (a). Since then the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 has replaced the 1986 Act, and complaints up to five lakh rupees carry no fee, but the position tested is that of 2012.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. The Speaker does not hold office during the pleasure of the President. Under Article 94 the Speaker vacates office on ceasing to be a member of the House, on resigning, or on removal by a resolution of the Lok Sabha passed by a majority of all the then members after fourteen days' notice. Pleasure tenure applies to the Governor, ministers and the Attorney General, not to a presiding officer whose independence from the executive is the point of the office.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Article 93 requires the Lok Sabha to choose two of its members as Speaker and Deputy Speaker, so only a sitting member can be elected; the six month rule belongs to ministers under Article 75(5).
• Statement 3 is correct. Article 94(b) lets the Speaker resign by writing addressed to the Deputy Speaker. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is the pleasure doctrine: knowing that only the House can remove the Speaker removes (a) and (c), and the resignation rule then settles (b) over (d).

Article 131 gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction in disputes between the Government of India and one or more States, between the Government of India and any States on one side and other States on the other, and between two or more States, where a legal right depends on a question of law or fact.

• Statement 1 is correct and statement 4 is correct, both being named in Article 131.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Election disputes for Parliament and the State legislatures are barred from ordinary courts by Article 329(b) and tried on election petition by the High Court under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, with an appeal to the Supreme Court; only the elections of the President and the Vice President come to the Supreme Court first, under Article 71.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Article 131 speaks of States, and a Union Territory, administered by the President, is not a State for this purpose. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is the federal logic of the Article, which drops the election and Union Territory items and leaves (c), the only code with 1 and 4.

A biopesticide is a pest control agent derived from a living organism or its products, and all three kinds of organism listed supply them.

• Statement 1 is correct. The soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis produces crystal proteins toxic to the larvae of moths, beetles and mosquitoes, and Bt formulations are among the most widely used biopesticides; the same bacterium is the source of the genes in Bt cotton.
• Statement 2 is correct. Fungi such as Trichoderma, used against soil borne plant pathogens, and the insect pathogenic Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae are commercial biopesticides registered under the Insecticides Act, 1968.
• Statement 3 is correct. Flowering plants supply botanical pesticides: neem, Azadirachta indica, yields azadirachtin, an insect antifeedant and growth regulator, and pyrethrum comes from the flowers of a chrysanthemum. With all three correct, the official answer is (d). The elimination route is neem, which removes (a), after which the familiar Bt bacterium removes (b) and any fungal agent decides between (c) and (d).

Biomass gasification is the partial combustion of solid biomass in a restricted supply of air or oxygen, converting it into a combustible mixture called producer gas.

• Statement 1 is correct. Almost any dry agricultural residue can serve as feedstock, and coconut shells, groundnut shells and rice husk are standard fuels for the gasifiers promoted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, rice husk plants being common in Bihar.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The combustible part of producer gas is chiefly carbon monoxide, with hydrogen and a little methane; carbon dioxide is not combustible at all, and nitrogen makes up about half the gas, so the statement errs twice.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Cleaned and cooled producer gas runs internal combustion engines, in dual fuel mode in diesel engines or alone in spark ignition gas engines, which is how most small gasifier power plants generate electricity. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is basic chemistry: carbon dioxide cannot be combustible, which removes (b) and (d), and the wood gas vehicles of the Second World War remove (c).

Ultraviolet treatment of water uses short wave ultraviolet light, near 254 nanometres, which is absorbed by the nucleic acids of microorganisms.

• Statement 1 is correct. The radiation damages the DNA and RNA of bacteria, viruses and protozoa, forming thymine dimers that stop them reproducing, so they are inactivated even if not removed; this is why UV is called disinfection, not filtration.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. UV does not remove dissolved substances, and odours from dissolved gases such as hydrogen sulphide or organic compounds are removed by activated carbon, aeration or oxidation.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. UV neither speeds sedimentation nor removes turbidity; turbidity is in fact an obstacle, since suspended particles shield microorganisms from the light, so water is filtered before it reaches the lamp, clarification being the job of coagulation with alum, settling and filtration. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is that UV is a form of energy, not a chemical or a filter: it acts on living cells but takes nothing out of the water, which removes statements 2 and 3 together.

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice, the unit from which graphite is stacked, first isolated in 2004 at the University of Manchester.

• Statement 1 is correct. It is a two dimensional material, one atom thick, whose electrons move with very high mobility, giving excellent electrical and thermal conductivity.
• Statement 2 is correct. It is the thinnest material known and among the strongest ever measured, far stronger than steel by weight.
• Statement 3 is incorrect, failing on its first half: graphene is made entirely of carbon, not silicon. Its second half is true, since a single layer absorbs only about 2.3 per cent of visible light, but one false element makes the statement incorrect.
• Statement 4 is correct. Transparency with conductivity makes graphene a candidate to replace indium tin oxide as the transparent electrode in touch screens, liquid crystal displays and organic light emitting diodes. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is the word 'silicon', which removes (b) and (d), and (c) is preferred over (a) because conducting electrodes for screens were the most reported application.

The phase out of leaded petrol in India by 2000 left several point and product sources.

• Statement 1 is correct. Lead smelters, especially informal units recovering lead from used batteries, release lead fumes and dust and are among the worst sources of lead poisoning.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The 'lead' of a pencil is graphite mixed with clay, and pens contain no lead.
• Statement 3 is correct. Lead chromate and lead carbonate have long been used as pigments and driers in paints, and flaking old paint exposes children in particular.
• Statement 4 is treated as incorrect by the key. Hair oils and ordinary cosmetics are not regarded as a significant source, although certain kohl and sindoor samples have been found to contain lead, which makes this the hard part of the item. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is statement 2 alone: every code except (b) includes pens and pencils, so knowing that pencil lead is graphite settles the answer. Since then the Household and Decorative Paints (Regulation of Lead Contents) Rules, 2016 have capped lead in such paints at 90 parts per million.

Stem cells are unspecialised cells that can renew themselves and differentiate into specialised cell types.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. They are not confined to mammals: every multicellular organism that grows and repairs itself has them, from the neoblasts of flatworms to the meristem cells at the root and shoot tips of plants.
• Statement 2 is correct. Cells grown from stem cells, such as heart muscle or liver cells, are used to screen candidate drugs for efficacy and toxicity before clinical trials.
• Statement 3 is correct. Bone marrow or haematopoietic stem cell transplantation has long been established therapy for leukaemia, lymphoma and thalassaemia, and uses for corneal damage, spinal injury and heart disease were under trial. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is the qualifier 'mammals only': recalling that plants grow from meristems removes (a) and (d), and the well known therapeutic use settles (b) over (c). Since then the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded in October after this paper, recognised John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for reprogramming mature cells into induced pluripotent stem cells.

Chlorofluorocarbons are stable, non toxic, non flammable compounds of chlorine, fluorine and carbon, properties that made them industrially useful until their ozone depleting effect was established.

• Statement 1 is correct. CFC 11 was the standard blowing agent for polyurethane and polystyrene foams.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Tubeless tyres are made with an airtight inner liner of butyl or halobutyl rubber, and CFCs play no part in their production or inflation.
• Statement 3 is correct. CFC 113 was widely used to clean printed circuit boards and precision electronic components because it evaporates quickly and leaves no residue.
• Statement 4 is correct. CFC 11 and CFC 12 were the common propellants in aerosol spray cans before substitutes replaced them. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is tubeless tyres, the one use with no link to a volatile gas, which leaves (b) and (c), and the use of CFCs in foams settles (c). At the date of this paper CFCs had been phased out under the Montreal Protocol, by India from August 2008 except for medical inhalers, so 'are used' describes historic uses.

Antimatter consists of particles with the same mass as ordinary particles but opposite charge, and the anti-helium-4 nucleus, two antiprotons and two antineutrons, was produced in gold ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Antimatter annihilates on contact with ordinary matter, can be made only in a few nuclei at enormous cost and cannot be stored or used in the field, so it has no bearing on mineral or oil exploration.
• Statement 2 is correct. Anti-helium is the heaviest antinucleus ever made, and knowing how rarely it forms tells physicists what to look for in space; the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, installed on the International Space Station in May 2011, searches cosmic rays for it as a signature of antimatter stars or galaxies.
• Statement 3 is correct. The Big Bang should have produced matter and antimatter equally, and why the universe is almost wholly matter is a central problem in the study of its evolution. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is the impracticality of statement 1, which leaves (b) and (c), and the antimatter galaxy search then settles (b).

The expansion of the universe rests on two classical lines of evidence.

• Statement 2 is correct. Hubble showed in 1929 that the redshift of distant galaxies grows with distance, so galaxies recede at speeds proportional to their distance, as a uniformly expanding universe requires.
• Statement 1 is correct. The cosmic microwave background, detected by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, is radiation from the hot, dense early universe, stretched by the expansion into microwaves; its uniform temperature of about 2.7 kelvin records that expansion and cooling.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Asteroids orbit the Sun within the bound solar system and tell us nothing about cosmic expansion.
• Statement 4 is treated as incorrect. A supernova is the explosion of a star at the end of its life, a stellar event, not a cosmological one; what the Nobel laureates used was the brightness of Type Ia supernovae as standard candles, which showed the expansion to be accelerating. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is the asteroids, which remove (c), and the redshift, which removes (d), the microwave background then deciding between (a) and (b).

The charged particles described are the solar wind, protons and electrons flowing from the Sun at several hundred kilometres per second, with bursts from solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

• Option (a) is correct. The Earth's magnetic field, generated by molten iron moving in the outer core, forms the magnetosphere, which deflects most of these particles around the planet; some are trapped in the Van Allen belts, and others are funnelled along field lines towards the magnetic poles, producing the aurorae.
• Option (b) is wrong because the stratospheric ozone layer absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation; it shields against part of the electromagnetic spectrum, not charged particles.
• Option (c) is wrong because the upper atmosphere holds little moisture, most water vapour lying in the lower troposphere, and moisture plays no role in stopping particle radiation.
• Option (d) falls once (a) is established. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is the aurora: knowing that solar particles striking the atmosphere near the poles cause the polar lights gives the mechanism of option (a).

• Statement 1 is correct. The Sushruta Samhita, the classical Indian treatise on surgery whose compiled form is placed in the early centuries of the Christian era, describes over a hundred blunt instruments and some twenty sharp ones, with operations such as the removal of cataracts and bladder stones and the reconstruction of the nose.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Ancient Indian surgery described plastic repair with skin flaps, notably rhinoplasty, but there is no evidence of transplanting internal organs, possible only in the twentieth century with modern immunology.
• Statement 3 is correct. Aryabhata, in the Aryabhatiya of 499 AD, used the jya, the half chord, which is the sine, and gave a table of sine differences.
• Statement 4 is correct. Brahmagupta, in the Brahmasphutasiddhanta of 628 AD, gave the formula for the area of a cyclic quadrilateral and the lengths of its diagonals. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is statement 2: knowing that organ transplants are modern removes (a) and (d), and Sushruta's famous surgical instruments then separate (c) from (b).

Buddhism and Jainism both arose in the sixth and fifth centuries BC as heterodox movements against the Brahmanical order, but they parted on the discipline of the body.

• Statement 1 is not common to both. Avoiding the extremes of severe penance and sensual indulgence is the Middle Path of the Buddha; Jainism prescribes rigorous austerity, fasting and, for the most devout, sallekhana, the voluntary fast unto death, and Mahavira himself practised severe penance for over twelve years.
• Statement 2 is common to both. Neither accepted the authority of the Vedas, which is why both are classed as nastika systems.
• Statement 3 is common to both. Both rejected the efficacy of Vedic sacrifice and ritual, placing ethical conduct in its place: the Eightfold Path in Buddhism and the three jewels of right faith, right knowledge and right conduct in Jainism. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is statement 1: knowing that the Middle Path is distinctively Buddhist removes (a), (c) and (d), since every code except (b) includes it.

Inclusive governance brings all sections of the people, particularly the poor and the excluded, into both the benefits of development and the decisions that shape it.

• Statement 1 is not part of it. Permitting non banking financial companies to do banking is a matter of financial regulation, competition and prudential policy, not inclusion as such.
• Statement 2 is part of it. District Planning Committees under Article 243ZD, added by the Seventy fourth Amendment, consolidate the plans of panchayats and municipalities into a district plan, carrying participatory planning to the local level.
• Statement 3 is part of it. Higher public spending on health widens access for those who cannot pay for private care, which is why the Eleventh and Twelfth Plans called for it.
• Statement 4 is part of it. The Mid day Meal Scheme improves enrolment, attendance and nutrition among the poorest children. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is statement 1, the only measure aimed at financial intermediaries rather than citizens, which removes (a) and (d), while (b) omits the planning committees. Since then the Mid day Meal Scheme has become PM POSHAN, from 2021.

Nagara, Dravida and Vesara are the three main styles of Hindu temple architecture named in the Shilpa Shastras.

• Option (c) is correct. The Nagara style of north India has a curvilinear shikhara over the sanctum, often with smaller spires and without elaborate enclosure walls, as at Khajuraho and in Odisha. The Dravida style of the south has a pyramidal vimana rising in storeys, an enclosing wall and, later, towering gopurams, as at Thanjavur and Madurai. The Vesara style of the Deccan combines both, as in the later Chalukyan and Hoysala temples of Karnataka.
• Option (a) is wrong because anthropologists describe the racial groupings of the subcontinent in other terms.
• Option (b) is wrong because India's language families are Indo Aryan, Dravidian, Austro Asiatic and Tibeto Burman, and Dravidian matches the architectural name only by coincidence.
• Option (d) is wrong because the gharanas of Hindustani music are named after places such as Gwalior, Agra, Kirana and Jaipur. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is the word Vesara, which belongs only to architecture.

The Congress ministries formed in the provinces after the 1937 elections under the Government of India Act, 1935 resigned in October and November 1939 over the Second World War. On 3 September 1939 the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared India a belligerent without consulting Indian leaders or the provincial governments. The Congress asked Britain to state its war aims and promise freedom after the war; when the Viceroy's statement of 17 October 1939 offered only consultation and a later revision of the Act, the Congress directed its ministries to resign. None of the three stated reasons is correct.

• Option (a) is wrong because the Congress's failure to form governments in the other provinces had been the position since 1937.
• Option (b) is wrong because the left wing under Subhas Chandra Bose criticised the ministries but did not make them unworkable.
• Option (c) is wrong because communal riots were not the reason, although the Muslim League celebrated the resignations as a Day of Deliverance on 22 December 1939. The official answer is (d). The elimination route is the date: 1939 points at once to the outbreak of war, which none of (a) to (c) mentions.

The Accredited Social Health Activist, ASHA, is the community health worker created by the National Rural Health Mission of 2005, a woman from the village, ordinarily one for every thousand people, who links households to the public health system.

• Statement 1 is correct. She mobilises and accompanies pregnant women to the health facility for antenatal check ups and institutional delivery.
• Statement 2 is correct. ASHAs carry Nischay pregnancy test kits to detect pregnancy early, so that antenatal care can begin in the first trimester.
• Statement 3 is correct. Counselling on nutrition, breastfeeding, immunisation, sanitation and birth preparedness is among her core tasks.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. The ASHA is not a skilled birth attendant: deliveries are to be conducted by auxiliary nurse midwives, staff nurses and doctors, preferably in a facility. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is statement 4: since the ASHA promotes institutional delivery rather than conducting it, (b) and (d) fall, and the pregnancy kits settle (a) over (c). Since then the Mission has become part of the National Health Mission, from 2013.

The Government of India Act, 1919 gave effect to the Montagu Chelmsford reforms, which followed Montagu's declaration of August 1917 on the progressive realisation of responsible government.

• Statement 1 is correct. The Act introduced dyarchy in the provinces: transferred subjects, such as education, health and local government, went to ministers responsible to the legislative council, and reserved subjects, such as finance, law and order and land revenue, stayed with the Governor and his executive council.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Separate electorates for Muslims came with the Indian Councils Act, 1909, the Morley Minto reforms; the 1919 Act only extended the communal principle to Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo Indians and Europeans.
• Statement 3 is correct. The Act and its Devolution Rules separated central and provincial subjects, devolving legislative and financial authority over the provincial list and relaxing central control. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is the date of separate electorates: knowing that they came in 1909 removes (b) and (d), and the devolution of subjects, which made dyarchy possible, settles (c) over (a).

The Indian National Social Conference was founded in 1887 by M. G. Ranade and Raghunath Rao and met annually alongside the Indian National Congress, usually in the same pandal, as its social reform counterpart. A separate body was needed because the Congress, anxious to keep a broad political platform across regions, religions and castes, resolved to confine itself to political questions and keep social reform, on which its members were deeply divided, out of its deliberations, as Dadabhai Naoroji said at Calcutta in 1886.

• Option (b) states this and is correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because the Conference was a national body drawing reformers from all over India, not a merger of Bengal organisations.
• Option (c) is wrong as a statement of the reason: Ranade was its moving spirit, but Behramji Malabari, the Parsi reformer who campaigned against child marriage, was not a cofounder, and the option describes who acted rather than why.
• Option (d) falls once (b) is accepted. The official answer is (b). There is no easy elimination route; the item is hard because (c) names a real founder, and the decisive fact is that the Congress chose to exclude social questions.

B. R. Ambedkar founded political parties at three points of his career.

• Statement 3 is correct. He founded the Independent Labour Party in August 1936 to contest the 1937 provincial elections, with a programme for workers and peasants as well as the depressed classes, and it won most of the seats it contested in the Bombay Presidency.
• Statement 2 is correct. In 1942 he transformed it into the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, founded at Nagpur as a party specifically for the Scheduled Castes. His followers launched the Republican Party of India, which he had planned, in 1957, after his death.
• Statement 1 is incorrect. The Peasants and Workers Party of India was founded in 1947 by leaders who broke away from the Congress in Maharashtra, among them Keshavrao Jedhe and Shankarrao More; Ambedkar had no role in it, though its name invites confusion with his labour party. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is the Scheduled Castes Federation, which every candidate links with Ambedkar and which removes (c), after which the Independent Labour Party settles (b) over (a) and (d).

The Constitution gives the Rajya Sabha two special powers that flow from its character as the house representing the States.

• Option (b) states both and is correct. Under Article 249 it may, by a resolution supported by two thirds of the members present and voting, declare it necessary in the national interest that Parliament legislate on a State List matter, the resolution lasting up to one year at a time and being renewable. Under Article 312 it may, by a similar resolution, declare it necessary in the national interest to create All India Services common to the Union and the States, which Parliament may then create by law.
• Option (a) is wrong because under Article 3 a State's area, boundaries and name are altered by an ordinary law passed by both Houses, with no special role for the Rajya Sabha.
• Option (c) is wrong because the President's election and pension are governed by the Constitution and laws passed by both Houses.
• Option (d) is wrong because the number of Election Commissioners is fixed by the President under Article 324. The official answer is (b).

The National Rural Livelihoods Mission, launched by the Ministry of Rural Development in June 2011 as Aajeevika, restructured the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana to reduce rural poverty through livelihoods built on institutions of the poor.

• Statement 2 is correct. Its core strategy is universal social mobilisation, bringing at least one woman from every rural poor household into a self help group, federating the groups and giving them bank linkage and revolving funds, along with skill development for rural youth.
• Statement 1 is incorrect. The Mission does not set up manufacturing industries or agribusiness centres; it supports the farm and non farm livelihoods of the community institutions it builds.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Free seeds, fertilisers, pump sets and micro irrigation equipment are not part of the Mission, which builds the capacity and credit access of the poor rather than distributing inputs. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is the phrase 'free of cost', which removes (c) and (d), and the scale of 'a large number of new manufacturing industries', which does not fit a self help group mission, then leaves (b). Since then the Mission was renamed the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana, National Rural Livelihoods Mission, in 2016.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index was developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and introduced in UNDP's Human Development Report of 2010, replacing the Human Poverty Index. Built from household survey data, it measures overlapping deprivations at the household level across three dimensions and ten indicators.

• Statement 1 is correct. The dimensions are health, measured by nutrition and child mortality, education, measured by years of schooling and school attendance, and living standards, measured by cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, flooring and assets; a household deprived in a third or more of the weighted indicators counts as poor.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Purchasing power parity is a monetary conversion used for income based measures such as the one and a quarter dollar a day line, and the MPI deliberately moves away from income.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Budget deficits and GDP growth are national macroeconomic aggregates, no part of a household deprivation index. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is the household focus of the index, to which the national aggregates in statements 2 and 3 cannot belong.

The Thirteenth Finance Commission, chaired by Vijay Kelkar, reported at the end of 2009 for 2010 to 2015 and raised the States' share in the divisible pool of central taxes to 32 per cent.

• Statement 1 is correct. It recommended a model comprehensive GST and proposed a grand bargain under which States adopting that design would be compensated for revenue loss from a fund of 50,000 crore rupees.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Job creation is not within a Finance Commission's terms under Article 280, which concern the distribution of tax proceeds, grants in aid and the resources of panchayats and municipalities.
• Statement 3 is correct. The Commission linked grants to local bodies to a specified percentage of the previous year's divisible pool, with a basic and a performance grant, giving local bodies a predictable share. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is statement 2: a Finance Commission designs fiscal transfers, not jobs, which removes (b) and (d), and the widely reported GST grand bargain settles (c). Since then the GST came into force in 2017 under the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016, with five years of compensation.

The National Manufacturing Policy of 2011 aimed to raise manufacturing's share of GDP to 25 per cent within a decade and to create 100 million jobs.

• Statement 1 is correct. Its central instrument was the National Investment and Manufacturing Zone, an integrated industrial township of at least 5,000 hectares with world class infrastructure, several being announced along the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor.
• Statement 2 is correct. The Policy provided for simplified business regulation, including single window clearance for units in the zones, with self certification replacing many inspections.
• Statement 3 is correct. It proposed a Technology Acquisition and Development Fund to help micro, small and medium enterprises acquire appropriate and green technologies. The official answer is (d). The elimination route is the NIMZ, the Policy's centrepiece, which leaves (a), (c) and (d), and single window clearance, the most standard facilitation measure, makes the inclusive option the natural choice; the Fund is the hard part of the item. Since then the Policy has been followed by Make in India in 2014 and the production linked incentive schemes from 2020.

Parliamentary control over public finance rests on the principle that no tax can be levied and no money spent without the authority of law.

• Statement 1 is correct. Article 112 requires the Annual Financial Statement, the budget, to be laid before both Houses every year.
• Statement 2 is correct. Under Article 114 no money can be withdrawn from the Consolidated Fund of India except under an appropriation made by law.
• Statement 3 is correct. Article 115 provides for supplementary, additional and excess grants, and Article 116 for votes on account, votes of credit and exceptional grants, each needing parliamentary sanction.
• Statement 5 is correct. The Finance Bill gives effect to the taxation proposals, taxes being leviable only by authority of law under Article 265.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. India has no Parliamentary Budget Office; such offices exist in the United States, as the Congressional Budget Office, and in Canada, and one has only been proposed in India, ex post control resting with the Comptroller and Auditor General and the financial committees. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is statement 4, the only unfamiliar institution, which removes (b), (c) and (d).

On 16 August 1932 the British Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, announced the Communal Award, which extended separate electorates to the depressed classes along with Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and others. Gandhi, then in Yerawada jail, saw separate electorates for the depressed classes as a device to divide Hindu society and perpetuate untouchability, and on 20 September 1932 began a fast unto death against that part of the Award.

• Option (c) is correct. The fast ended with the Poona Pact of 24 September 1932 between Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar, which gave up those separate electorates for 148 reserved seats in the provincial legislatures within the general electorate.
• Option (a) is wrong because the failure of the Second Round Table Conference in 1931 led Gandhi to resume civil disobedience, for which he was arrested in January 1932, not to fast.
• Option (b) is wrong because Congress and League differences were a constant of the period, not the occasion of this fast.
• Option (d) falls once (c) is established. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is the familiar link between the fast of 1932 and the Poona Pact, the settlement of the Communal Award.

The Ryotwari Settlement was introduced in the Madras Presidency by Thomas Munro and Alexander Read from the early nineteenth century and extended to the Bombay Presidency under Mountstuart Elphinstone and his successors.

• Statement 1 is correct. The revenue was settled directly between the government and the individual cultivator, the ryot, without an intermediary zamindar, unlike the Permanent Settlement of Bengal.
• Statement 2 is correct. The ryot was recognised as the proprietor or occupant and given a patta recording his holding and the revenue due, and he could sell, mortgage or transfer the land so long as he paid.
• Statement 3 is correct. The land was surveyed and the revenue fixed on estimated produce and soil quality, the settlement being temporary, revised every twenty to thirty years, usually upward. With all three correct, the official answer is (c). The elimination route is the word itself: ryotwari means a settlement with the ryot, which makes statement 1 obvious, and the patta and the survey follow from dealing with each cultivator's field individually.

The demographic transition theory describes how a population moves from high birth and death rates to low ones as a society passes from a rural, agrarian and largely illiterate condition to an urban, industrial and literate one.

• Statement 2 describes the first stage. Fertility is high because children are an economic asset and contraception is absent, and mortality is high from epidemics, famine and poor health care, so population grows slowly.
• Statement 3 describes the second stage. With better sanitation, medicine and food supply, death rates fall sharply while birth rates stay high, producing rapid growth, the population explosion India experienced after independence.
• Statement 1 describes the last stage. Urbanisation, education, the cost of raising children and family planning bring birth rates down too, and both settle low, giving a stable population, as in most of Europe and Japan. The correct order is therefore 2, 3, 1, and the official answer is (c). The elimination route is that the sequence must begin with high birth and death rates, which removes (a) and (d), and that falling deaths precede falling births, which removes (b).

The Index of Eight Core Industries, released monthly by the Office of the Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, tracks the infrastructure industries that supply inputs to the rest of the economy. On the 2004 to 2005 base in use in 2012, the eight were coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilisers, steel, cement and electricity, with a combined weight of 37.90 per cent in the Index of Industrial Production.

• Statement 1 is correct, cement being one of the eight.
• Statement 2 is correct, fertilisers being included.
• Statement 3 is correct, natural gas being included.
• Statement 4 is correct, refinery products being one of the largest components.
• Statement 5 is incorrect. Textiles produce consumer and intermediate goods, not basic infrastructure inputs. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is textiles, the one consumer goods industry listed, which rules out (a) and (d), while (b) leaves out cement. Since then the base has been revised to 2011 to 2012 from April 2017, and the combined weight of the eight became 40.27 per cent.

• Statement 1 is correct. Among the Directive Principles, Article 41 provides for the right to education, Article 45 for early childhood care and education, and Article 46 for the educational interests of the weaker sections.
• Statement 2 is correct. The Eleventh Schedule lists education, including schools, technical training and libraries, among the matters for panchayats, and the Twelfth Schedule includes the promotion of cultural, educational and aesthetic aspects for municipalities.
• Statement 3 is correct. Under the Fifth Schedule the Tribes Advisory Councils advise on the welfare and advancement of the Scheduled Tribes, of which education is a principal part.
• Statement 4 is correct. Paragraph 6 of the Sixth Schedule empowers District Councils to establish and manage primary schools.
• Statement 5 is correct. The Seventh Schedule places education in Union List entries 63 to 66 and Concurrent List entry 25, where the Forty second Amendment of 1976 moved it. With all five correct, the official answer is (d). The elimination route is that only (c) and (d) include both the Seventh Schedule and the Directive Principles, and (c) leaves out the Sixth Schedule's schools.

Sea buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides, is a thorny deciduous shrub of the Himalayan cold deserts, growing wild in Ladakh, Lahaul and Spiti and parts of Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, its cultivation promoted by the Government through DRDO.

• Statement 1 is correct. Its suckering roots bind loose soil on slopes and river banks and carry nitrogen fixing nodules formed with the actinomycete Frankia, so it is planted to control erosion and desertification in cold arid areas.
• Statement 3 is correct. Its berries are exceptionally rich in vitamins C and E, carotenoids and omega fatty acids and are made into juices, jams, supplements and the beverage marketed as Leh Berry.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. The oil from its seeds and pulp is a costly nutraceutical and cosmetic ingredient, not a biodiesel feedstock; India's biodiesel effort centred on Jatropha and Pongamia.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. As a thin stemmed shrub or small tree, it yields only fuelwood and fencing material, not commercial timber. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is the plant's habit, which removes (b) and (d), and its use in afforesting Ladakh's slopes, which removes (a).

Mixed farming is a system in which crops are grown and livestock reared together on the same farm, each supporting the other.

• Option (c) is correct. The crops supply fodder and feed for the animals, while the animals supply manure, draught power and milk, meat or wool, and the integration reduces risk because the farmer does not depend on a single source of income. It is characteristic of north western Europe, the eastern United States and the Pampas, and in India small farmers widely keep cattle, buffaloes or goats alongside their crops.
• Option (a) is wrong because growing both cash and food crops describes a farm's crop mix, which may occur in any system.
• Option (b) is wrong because it defines mixed cropping, or intercropping where the crops are grown in rows, practised to insure against the failure of one crop; the similarity of the terms is the trap.
• Option (d) falls once (c) is established. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is to separate the two terms: mixed cropping concerns crops alone, while mixed farming adds animals.

The three clues together point to only one State.

• Statement 1 narrows the field: northern Rajasthan lies between about 28 and 30 degrees north, and both Arunachal Pradesh, from about 26.5 to 29.5 degrees north, and Uttarakhand lie on those latitudes.
• Statement 2 is decisive. The India State of Forest Report 2011 put the forest cover of Arunachal Pradesh at about 80 per cent of its area, among the highest of any State, against under half for Uttarakhand, about a third for Assam and about a quarter for Himachal Pradesh.
• Statement 3 fits Arunachal Pradesh as well: its protected areas, including Namdapha and Pakke, cover more than a tenth of the State, well over 12 per cent of its forest cover.
• Option (a) is therefore correct.
• Option (b) is wrong because much of Assam is cultivated valley land, option (c) because Himachal Pradesh lies north of 30 degrees with large alpine and snow areas, and option (d) on forest cover. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is forest cover, where only Arunachal Pradesh approaches 80 per cent. Since then later Reports have put the figure just under 80 per cent.

All three crops are legumes and fix atmospheric nitrogen, but they differ in use.

• Statement 1 is correct. Cowpea, or lobia, is a fast growing, spreading annual grown for its grain and green pods as a pulse, for fodder and as a green manure ploughed in before flowering, a standard agronomy example of a triple purpose legume.
• Statement 2 is correct. Green gram, or moong, is a short duration pulse whose haulms, after the pods are picked, are fed to cattle or ploughed back, especially when sown as a summer crop between rabi and kharif, so it serves as pulse, fodder and green manure.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Pigeon pea, or arhar, is a long duration, deep rooted and woody crop grown principally for its grain, tur dal, and not as green manure, since it cannot be turned into the soil quickly. The official answer is (a). There is no easy elimination route; the item turns on knowing pigeon pea as a woody plant that stands in the field most of the year, which removes (c) and (d), and the fodder use of cowpea then excludes (b).

Ocean currents are driven by primary forces that start the water moving and secondary forces that modify its flow.

• Statement 1 is correct. The Earth's rotation produces the Coriolis force, which deflects moving water to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern, giving the great gyres their circulation.
• Statement 2 is correct. Planetary winds drag the surface water along, so the trade winds drive the equatorial currents westward and the westerlies drive mid latitude currents eastward; air pressure governs those winds, and the reversal of the monsoon reverses the currents of the north Indian Ocean.
• Statement 3 is correct. Density differences in sea water, caused by temperature and salinity, drive the thermohaline circulation, cold dense water sinking in high latitudes and spreading along the ocean floor.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. The Earth's revolution around the Sun causes the seasons and changes the length of day and night, but exerts no force on the oceans. The official answer is (b). The elimination route is revolution, which removes (c) and (d), and density, which separates (b) from (a), both set out in the NCERT text on ocean water.

The National Wetland Atlas of 2011, prepared by the Space Applications Centre at Ahmedabad from satellite data, mapped over two lakh wetlands covering about 15.3 million hectares, some 4.6 per cent of India's area.

• Statement 1 is correct. Gujarat had the largest wetland area of any State, about 3.5 million hectares or nearly a quarter of the total, chiefly the intertidal mudflats and salt marshes of the Rann of Kachchh and the Gulf of Khambhat; Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal followed.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Inland wetlands, including lakes, ponds, reservoirs, tanks, ox bow lakes, waterlogged areas and river stretches, made up about two thirds of the wetland area, and coastal wetlands such as mudflats, mangroves, lagoons, creeks and salt pans about a quarter. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is statement 2: the reservoirs and tanks that dot the country show that inland wetlands must exceed coastal ones, which removes (b) and (c), and the Rann of Kachchh then gives (a) over (d).

A rainfed crop is grown largely without irrigation, relying on monsoon rain, and in India such crops are concentrated in the semi arid and arid tracts.

• Statement 1 is correct. Groundnut is grown mainly as a kharif crop on the light, well drained soils of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, most of its area depending on rainfall, which is why its output swings with the monsoon.
• Statement 2 is correct. Sesamum, or til, is a hardy dryland oilseed, grown largely as a rainfed kharif crop in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, with only a small irrigated area.
• Statement 3 is correct. Pearl millet, or bajra, the most drought tolerant cereal, is grown overwhelmingly under rainfed conditions on the sandy soils of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana and Maharashtra. With all three predominantly rainfed, the official answer is (d). The elimination route is their common character as crops of light soils and low rainfall, grown by small farmers in the dry tracts, unlike rice, wheat and sugarcane, which depend heavily on irrigation.

The Himalayas are young fold mountains, raised by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates from about fifty million years ago, and still rising, as the region's frequent earthquakes show.

• Statement 1 is correct. Rivers such as the Indus, the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra are older than the ranges and have cut down as the land rose, carving deep gorges, which shows that the uplift is geologically recent.
• Statement 2 is correct. Sharp U turns, such as the Brahmaputra's around Namcha Barwa, record the adjustment of drainage to continuing uplift and deformation.
• Statement 3 is correct. The Himalayas consist of parallel ranges, the Himadri, the Himachal and the Shiwaliks, formed by successive phases of folding and thrusting, the youngest in the south; parallel folded ranges are the signature of fold mountains.
• Statement 4 is correct. Steep gradients and unstable slopes, causing frequent landslides, show that erosion has not yet worn them into the rounded forms of old ranges such as the Aravallis. With all four correct, the official answer is (d). The elimination route is the contrast with old mountains: each feature listed is something an old, worn range lacks.

In the troposphere temperature falls with height at an average of about 6.5 degrees Celsius per kilometre, the normal lapse rate.

• Statement 1 is correct. The atmosphere is largely transparent to incoming shortwave solar radiation, which heats the surface; the surface emits longwave radiation that the lower air absorbs, and conduction and convection carry the heat upward, so the air is heated from below and is cooler farther from the source.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Moisture decreases with height, about half the atmosphere's water vapour lying below two kilometres, and water vapour, an absorber of heat, would make the upper air warmer, not cooler, if it were abundant there.
• Statement 3 is correct. The thinner air at altitude has fewer molecules of gases, water vapour and dust to absorb and hold heat, and rising air also expands and cools adiabatically. The official answer is (c). The elimination route is statement 2: knowing that water vapour is concentrated near the surface removes (b) and (d), and the lower density of upper air, the commonest NCERT explanation, then decides (c) over (a).

The oceans absorb roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide released by human activity, and the dissolved gas forms carbonic acid, lowering sea water pH from about 8.2 to 8.1 since the industrial revolution, a rise of some 30 per cent in acidity. This reduces the carbonate ions that marine organisms need to build calcium carbonate shells and skeletons.

• Statement 1 is correct. Calcareous phytoplankton such as coccolithophores, which build plates of calcite, find calcification harder.
• Statement 2 is correct. Reef building corals deposit aragonite skeletons, and lower carbonate saturation slows reef growth and weakens the reef.
• Statement 3 is correct. Many animals, such as oysters, mussels, sea urchins and some crustaceans, pass through planktonic larval stages especially sensitive to acidity.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. Cloud seeding is a human technique of spraying silver iodide or salt particles into clouds to induce rain, and neither it nor cloud formation is an established concern of ocean acidification. The official answer is (a). The elimination route is statement 4, which removes (d), and the link between acidification and coral reefs, which removes (c), while (b) omits the other calcifiers at risk.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Under Articles 148 to 151 the Comptroller and Auditor General is an auditor, not a controller of the exchequer; unlike its British counterpart, the Indian office has no control over withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund, and nothing in Articles 352 or 360 gives it one. It audits after the money is spent.
• Statement 2 is correct. The audit reports on the Union's accounts are submitted to the President, laid before each House under Article 151, and examined by the Public Accounts Committee.
• Statement 3 is correct. Audit findings are public documents, and investigating agencies may use the facts they bring out to register cases against those who misused public money; the CAG itself does not prosecute.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. The CAG has no judicial or prosecuting powers; for most government companies it appoints the statutory auditor and conducts supplementary audit, but that is audit, not adjudication. With statements 2 and 3 correct, the official answer is (c). Knowing that the CAG has no judicial power strikes out (a) and (d), and the PAC link leaves (b) or (c).

Janani Suraksha Yojana, launched in April 2005 under the National Rural Health Mission, aims to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality by promoting institutional delivery among poor pregnant women.

• Statement 1 is correct: promoting deliveries in a government or accredited private health facility is the core aim, the ASHA worker linking the woman and the facility.
• Statement 2 is correct: the scheme is a hundred per cent centrally sponsored cash assistance programme, the money going to the mother to meet the cost of delivery and of reaching the facility, with higher amounts in the low performing States and rural areas.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. Compensation for wage loss during pregnancy is a conditional maternity benefit; at the date of this paper it was the purpose of the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana, piloted from 2010 in selected districts, and since 2017 it has been carried by the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana. With statements 1 and 2 correct, the official answer is (a). Knowing that JSY is about institutional delivery leaves (a) and (d), and recognising wage loss as the separate maternity benefit settles it.

Article 75 provides that the Prime Minister is appointed by the President and that a Minister who for six consecutive months is not a member of either House of Parliament ceases to be a Minister. The Constitution sets no separate rule for the Prime Minister, and the Supreme Court has held that a person who is not a member of either House may be appointed Prime Minister, provided he or she becomes a member within six months. H.D. Deve Gowda in 1996 is the standard example: not a member when appointed, he later entered the Rajya Sabha.

• Option (a) is therefore correct.
• Option (b) is wrong because membership of either House suffices; Indira Gandhi in 1966 and Manmohan Singh throughout his tenure were members of the Rajya Sabha.
• Option (c) is wrong because membership is not a condition at the moment of appointment, only within six months.
• Option (d) combines both errors. The official answer is (a). The Rajya Sabha Prime Ministers alone eliminate (b) and (d).

The Delimitation Commission is a high powered body set up by the Union under a Delimitation Commission Act passed under Article 82 and Article 170, to readjust the boundaries of Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies; such Commissions were constituted in 1952, 1963, 1973 and 2002.

• Statement 1 is correct. Its orders have the force of law, and Article 329(a) bars any court from questioning the validity of a law relating to the delimitation of constituencies or the allotment of seats made under Article 327 or 328; the Delimitation Act itself provides that the orders cannot be called in question in any court.
• Statement 2 is correct. Copies of the orders are laid before the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assembly concerned, but neither House can modify them; laying is for information, and the orders take effect from the date the President specifies. Both statements being correct, the answer is (c). A candidate who remembers only that delimitation orders are final for all purposes reaches (c) directly.

The Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948 originally applied to non seasonal factories, but Section 1(5) allows the appropriate government to extend it to other establishments, and the Union and the States have used that power steadily.

• Statement 1 is correct: shops, hotels and restaurants employing ten or more persons have been covered by notification in most States since the 1970s and 1980s.
• Statement 2 is correct: road motor transport undertakings were among the earliest establishments brought under the Act by such notification.
• Statement 3 is correct: newspaper establishments, as defined in the Working Journalists Act, are likewise covered.
• Statement 4 is correct: private medical and educational institutions employing ten or more persons were brought under the scheme around 2010 to 2011 by the Union and many States, which is what put this item in the news. With all four correct, the official answer is (d). There is no clean elimination route; a candidate who knows that the newest extension was to private medical institutions can see that all four categories are in.

• Item 1 is correct: Article 281 requires the President to cause every recommendation of the Finance Commission, with an explanatory memorandum of the action taken on it, to be laid before each House.
• Item 2 is incorrect: the Public Accounts Committee is a committee of Parliament, constituted under the Rules of Procedure of the Lok Sabha, and its reports are presented to the House by its Chairman; the President has no part in this.
• Item 3 is correct: Article 151 requires the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the Union's accounts to be submitted to the President, who causes them to be laid before each House.
• Item 4 is correct: Article 338 requires the National Commission for Scheduled Castes to present its reports to the President, who causes them to be laid before each House with a memorandum on the action taken. With 1, 3 and 4 correct, the official answer is (c). Since the President lays the reports of constitutional bodies while Parliament's own committees report directly to their House, recognising the PAC removes (b) and (d), and the Finance Commission removes (a).

Article 108 provides for a joint sitting of the two Houses, summoned by the President, when a Bill passed by one House is rejected by the other, when the Houses disagree on amendments, or when more than six months pass without the other House passing it. It applies only to ordinary Bills, including financial Bills other than Money Bills, so item 1 is correct.

• Item 2 is incorrect. A Money Bill under Article 109 can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha can only make recommendations within fourteen days, which the Lok Sabha may accept or reject; the Lok Sabha's will prevails, so no deadlock can arise and no joint sitting is needed.
• Item 3 is incorrect. A Constitution Amendment Bill under Article 368 must be passed by each House separately by the special majority, and there is no provision for a joint sitting; if one House rejects it, the Bill fails. The official answer is (a). Knowing either that Money Bills give the Lok Sabha the last word or that amendments need separate passage by each House leaves only (a).

The District Rural Development Agency was set up in the early 1980s, registered as a society, as the principal district level organ to manage and oversee the anti poverty programmes of the Ministry of Rural Development, beginning with the IRDP.

• Statement 1 is incorrect: DRDAs are not Panchayati Raj Institutions, which are constitutional bodies under Part IX, though DRDAs were to work under the chairmanship of the Zila Parishad.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: DRDAs are not research bodies; they do not undertake scientific studies of the causes of poverty and malnutrition.
• Statement 3 is correct: the guidelines charge them with securing inter sectoral and inter departmental coordination for the effective implementation of anti poverty programmes.
• Statement 4 is correct: they watch over the effective utilisation of the funds meant for these programmes. With 3 and 4 correct, the official answer is (b). Seeing the agency as a coordinating and supervising body rules out the claims that it is a local government and that it does research. Since then the DRDA administration scheme has been wound up and its functions merged into the Zila Parishads from April 2022.

The Fundamental Duties are in Article 51A, Part IVA, added by the Forty second Amendment of 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee.

• Item 1 is correct: clause (f) asks every citizen to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture.
• Item 2 is incorrect: protecting the weaker sections from social injustice and all forms of exploitation is a Directive Principle, in Article 46, which also directs the State to promote the educational and economic interests of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; it is a duty of the State, not of the citizen.
• Item 3 is correct: clause (h) asks citizens to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.
• Item 4 is correct: clause (j) asks them to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement. With 1, 3 and 4 correct, the official answer is (c). Asking whom a provision addresses, citizens or the State, marks item 2 as a Directive Principle and alone eliminates (a), (b) and (d).

• Statement 1 is correct. Article 124(2) requires the President to consult the Chief Justice of India while appointing other judges of the Supreme Court, and at the date of this paper the Second Judges case of 1993 had made that opinion, formed through the collegium, decisive.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Under Article 124(4) a judge can be removed only by an order of the President after an address by each House of Parliament, on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity; the Chief Justice has no power of removal.
• Statement 3 is correct. Under Article 112(3)(d) and Article 125 the salaries and allowances of the judges are charged on the Consolidated Fund of India and are not submitted to the vote of Parliament.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. Article 146 gives the power to appoint the officers and servants of the Supreme Court to the Chief Justice or a judge or officer he directs, not to the Government. With 1 and 3 correct, the official answer is (a). Knowing that removal needs Parliament eliminates (d), and knowing who appoints the staff eliminates (b) and (c).

Thorium-232 is not itself fissile but is fertile: in a reactor it absorbs a neutron and, through beta decays, becomes uranium-233, an excellent fissile fuel. That is the basis of the third stage of India's three stage programme, planned around the large thorium reserves in the monazite sands of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha.

• Statement 1 is correct: thorium is roughly three to four times as abundant as uranium in the Earth's crust.
• Statement 2 is correct: natural uranium contains only about 0.7 per cent fissile uranium-235, and in once through reactors most of the mined uranium is never used, whereas in a breeding cycle practically all the mined thorium can be converted and fissioned, so the energy per unit mass of mined mineral is higher.
• Statement 3 is correct: because thorium sits lower in the periodic table, a thorium cycle produces far less plutonium and fewer long lived minor actinides, so its waste is less radiotoxic over the long term, though uranium-232 makes handling harder. With all three statements correct, the official answer is (d). Each statement follows from the logic of breeding.

Sunlight arrives mostly as short wave visible and near infrared radiation, which passes through the atmosphere largely unabsorbed by carbon dioxide and warms the surface. The warmed Earth then radiates long wave infrared, and carbon dioxide, with water vapour, methane and nitrous oxide, absorbs strongly in parts of the infrared band and re radiates much of that energy back towards the surface.

• Option (d) is therefore correct; strictly the infrared that matters most is the terrestrial radiation emitted by the Earth, but among the options only (d) names the right band.
• Option (a) is wrong because carbon dioxide does not absorb water vapour; the two are separate greenhouse gases.
• Option (b) is wrong because ultraviolet radiation is absorbed chiefly by ozone in the stratosphere.
• Option (c) is wrong because carbon dioxide is transparent to most of the visible spectrum, which is why sunlight reaches the ground at all. The official answer is (d). A candidate who remembers that ozone takes the ultraviolet and that greenhouse gases trap heat, heat being infrared, reaches (d) directly.

The bulk of every living cell is made of a small set of elements, chiefly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, with phosphorus and sulphur in smaller amounts. Carbon, able to form four bonds and long chains, provides the skeleton of every biomolecule, hydrogen is present in all of them, and nitrogen is essential to amino acids and to the bases of nucleic acids. The Miller and Urey experiment of 1953, which produced amino acids by passing electric sparks through methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapour, shows the origin of life as the chemistry of exactly these elements.

• Option (b), carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because sodium, though needed for ion balance, is not a building block of the molecules of life.
• Option (c) is wrong because calcium is a structural mineral of bone and shell and phosphorus is a minor constituent; neither set includes carbon.
• Option (d) is wrong because potassium, like sodium, is an ion of cell physiology. The official answer is (b). The quickest route is to look for carbon and nitrogen together: only (b) has both.

Bt brinjal, from Mahyco, carries the cry1Ac gene, which makes a protein toxic to the fruit and shoot borer.

• Statement 1 is incorrect because that gene comes from Bacillus thuringiensis, a soil bacterium, not a fungus.
• Statement 2 is incorrect because Bt brinjal does not use genetic use restriction technology, the so called terminator seeds that produce sterile progeny; such technology is not permitted in India, and the Bt gene had also been bred into open pollinated varieties whose seed farmers could save.
• Statement 3 is correct: a main objection in the public consultations was that the long term effects of eating a Bt vegetable on human health had not been adequately tested.
• Statement 4 is correct: India is a centre of origin and diversity of brinjal, with many local varieties and wild relatives, so gene flow and loss of varietal diversity were serious concerns. With 3 and 4 correct, the official answer is (c). Knowing only that Bt is a bacterium removes (a) and (d), and the terminator claim is the second trap. Since then Bangladesh has released Bt brinjal commercially, from 2014, while the Indian moratorium remains.

Genetic engineering has given crop plants traits other than pest resistance, and the standard list, as in the NCERT Class XII chapter on biotechnology, includes tolerance to abiotic stresses, reduced post harvest losses, increased efficiency of mineral use and enhanced nutritional value.

• Item 1 is correct: drought tolerant transgenic lines of maize, rice and other crops have been developed, and a drought tolerant maize was in field trials at the date of this paper.
• Item 2 is correct: Golden Rice, engineered to produce beta carotene, a vitamin A precursor, is the standard example of improved nutritive value.
• Item 3 is incorrect: no genetically engineered plant has been created to enable photosynthesis in spaceships and space stations; plants photosynthesise there with ordinary genes given light, water and carbon dioxide.
• Item 4 is correct: the Flavr Savr tomato of 1994, in which the enzyme that softens the fruit was suppressed, was the first commercial GM food and was engineered for longer shelf life. With 1, 2 and 4 correct, the official answer is (c). The space claim is the odd one out, leaving (a) or (c), and Flavr Savr settles it for (c).

Dadabhai Naoroji, three times President of the Indian National Congress and the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons in 1892, made his lasting contribution through economic critique. In papers from the 1860s and 1870s, collected in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India in 1901, he estimated India's per capita income and argued that a large part of the country's wealth was drained to Britain through Home Charges, salaries and pensions, and profits. This drain theory became the foundation of the economic critique of colonialism.

• Statement 1 is therefore correct.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: reinterpreting ancient texts to restore Indian self confidence was the work of figures such as Swami Vivekananda, Dayananda Saraswati and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, not Naoroji, whose method was statistical and economic.
• Statement 3 is incorrect: Naoroji did not hold that social evils must be eradicated before anything else; that ordering belongs to social reformers, and the early Congress kept social reform separate from its political agenda. The official answer is (a). A candidate who associates Naoroji with the drain theory reaches (a) without judging the other two statements.

Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form of Hindustani vocal music, a slow, austere and highly structured style sung with the pakhawaj.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. Its roots lie in older forms of temple and prabandha singing, and its classical form took shape before the Mughals, most famously at the court of Raja Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior in the late fifteenth century; it then flourished at the Mughal court, where Tansen sang it for Akbar, so it did not originate in the Rajput kingdoms during the Mughal period.
• Statement 2 is correct. Dhrupad is primarily devotional and spiritual; its compositions are largely in praise of deities, and it was sung in temples and in the haveli tradition of Vaishnava worship.
• Statement 3 is correct. The long unmetred alap is sung not to words but to syllables such as ra, na, ta and num, traditionally held to derive from the mantra Om Anant Narayan Hari, hence its Sanskrit, mantric syllables. With 2 and 3 correct, the official answer is (b).
• Statement 1 sounds plausible; recalling that Man Singh Tomar ruled before Babur's arrival removes it.

Kuchipudi, named after a village in the Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh, grew out of a dance drama tradition performed by Brahmin men, the Bhagavata Mela style, and still carries features of theatre.

• Statement 1 is correct. Kuchipudi dancers occasionally speak or sing dialogue in the course of a performance, a use of vachika abhinaya that reflects its dramatic origins, whereas in Bharatanatyam the dancer does not speak and the text is carried by the singer and the orchestra.
• Statement 2 is incorrect because it reverses the forms. Dancing on the rim of a brass plate, sometimes with a pot of water on the head, is the Tarangam, a well known feature of Kuchipudi drawn from the Krishna Leela Tarangini, and it is not part of the Bharatanatyam repertoire. With only statement 1 correct, the official answer is (a). A candidate who knows that the brass plate belongs to Kuchipudi can discard (b) and (c) at once, and the dialogue feature, which follows from the same dance drama origins, confirms (a).

The Sufis of medieval India, organised in silsilas such as the Chishti, Suhrawardi, Qadiri and Naqshbandi, sought direct experience of God through discipline of the self under a pir, and their practices drew on Islamic mysticism and on Indian yogic traditions alike.

• Item 1 is correct: meditation and remembrance of God, zikr, were central, and control of breath, habs i dam, was practised, especially by the Chishtis, who were influenced by yogic methods; the yogic text Amritakunda was translated into Persian.
• Item 2 is correct: severe ascetic exercises in seclusion were part of the path, notably the chilla, forty days of fasting and prayer in a lonely place or a cell.
• Item 3 is correct: sama, the recitation of holy songs and music to arouse a state of mystical ecstasy, was a defining practice of the Chishtis, though the more orthodox Naqshbandis disapproved. With all three correct, the official answer is (d). Knowing sama, the best known Sufi practice, leaves (b), (c) or (d), and recalling the chilla and the yogic influence on the Chishtis leads to (d).

The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act of March 1919, the Rowlatt Act, was passed on the recommendations of the Sedition Committee chaired by Justice Sidney Rowlatt against the opposition of every Indian member of the Imperial Legislative Council. It was meant to continue in peacetime the wartime powers of the Defence of India Act: political activists could be tried by special courts without juries and without appeal, and suspects detained without trial for up to two years. Indians summed it up as no vakil, no daleel, no appeal.

• Option (b), imprisonment without trial and summary procedures for trial, is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because the war had ended in November 1918 and the Act was about political crime, not war contributions.
• Option (c) is wrong because the Khilafat Movement took shape in late 1919 and 1920, after the Act.
• Option (d) is wrong because press restrictions belonged to other laws, such as the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 and the Indian Press Act of 1910. The official answer is (b). A candidate who knows the slogan or the sequence of 1919 reaches (b) directly.

The Lahore Session of December 1929, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, came after the British had ignored the Congress's demand, made at Calcutta in 1928, that Dominion Status be granted within a year.

• Statement 1 is correct: at Lahore the Congress declared Purna Swaraj, complete independence, to be its goal, authorised the Working Committee to launch civil disobedience, and fixed 26 January 1930 to be observed as Independence Day.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: the rift between the Extremists and the Moderates, which had split the Congress at Surat in 1907, was healed at the Lucknow Session of 1916.
• Statement 3 is incorrect: no resolution rejecting the two nation theory was passed at Lahore in 1929; the trap lies in the place, for the Muslim League's Lahore Resolution of March 1940 demanded separate states for Muslims, and that is the resolution associated with Lahore and the two nation idea. With only statement 1 correct, the official answer is (a). Knowing Purna Swaraj and the reunion at Lucknow in 1916 is enough, since (a) is the only option with 1 and without 2.

The bhumisparsha mudra, the earth touching gesture, shows the Buddha seated in meditation with the right hand reaching down over the right knee, fingers touching the ground, and the left hand resting in the lap. It records the moment before the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya when Mara, having failed to break the Buddha's resolve by temptation and terror, challenged his right to the seat of awakening. The Buddha touched the earth and called upon it to bear witness to his merit and purity of purpose, and the earth goddess responded, after which Mara's forces fled.

• Option (b), calling the earth to witness his purity and chastity despite the temptations of Mara, is therefore the official answer, (b).
• Option (a) is wrong because the earth is summoned as a witness, not to watch over Mara or to guard the meditation.
• Option (c) is wrong because transience is a Buddhist doctrine, but it is not what this mudra means.
• Option (d) falls with (a). The elimination route is the word witness: a candidate who knows the gesture as the earth witness mudra chooses (b).

The religion of the early Vedic Aryans, known from the Rig Veda, was a worship of the forces of nature personified as gods, carried on through sacrifice. The principal deities were Indra, god of war and rain, Agni, the fire and the messenger between men and gods, Varuna, upholder of the cosmic order rita, Surya, Vayu, Ushas and Soma. They were propitiated through yajnas, sacrifices into the fire of milk, ghee, grain and soma, accompanied by hymns.

• Option (c), worship of nature and yajnas, is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because bhakti, intense personal devotion to a single god, emerged much later, with the Bhagavata and Shaiva traditions of the later centuries BCE.
• Option (b) is wrong because there is no evidence of image worship or temples in the early Vedic age; worship took place at the sacrificial fire.
• Option (d) is wrong because it pairs nature worship with bhakti, which belongs to a later age. The official answer is (c). Knowing that the Rig Vedic age had no idols and no temples discards (b), and that bhakti is later leaves (c) alone.

The Brahmo Samaj grew out of the Brahmo Sabha founded by Raja Rammohan Roy in Calcutta in 1828, and was carried forward by Debendranath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen.

• Statement 1 is correct: it rejected idolatry and polytheism and stood for the worship of one formless God, Rammohan drawing on the Upanishads and on rational monotheism.
• Statement 2 is correct: it denied the need for a priestly class to interpret the scriptures, holding that every person could approach God and read the texts directly.
• Statement 3 is incorrect: the Brahmo Samaj did not popularise the infallibility of the Vedas. Rammohan valued the Upanishads but judged all scripture by reason, and in the 1850s, under Debendranath, the Samaj formally gave up the belief that the Vedas were infallible. That doctrine belongs to Swami Dayananda Saraswati's Arya Samaj, founded in 1875, whose call was back to the Vedas. With 1 and 2 correct, the official answer is (b). Linking Vedic infallibility to the Arya Samaj removes (c) and (d) at once, and the rejection of priestly mediation settles (b) over (a).

The Reserve Bank of India stands to the commercial banks as a bank stands to its customers: it holds their deposits, lends to them and advises them.

• Statement 1 is correct. Banks are required to keep a proportion of their net demand and time liabilities as the Cash Reserve Ratio in balances with the RBI under Section 42 of the RBI Act, 1934, and they also keep their settlement balances there, through which interbank payments are cleared.
• Statement 2 is correct. The RBI lends to banks when they need funds, through the repo window of the Liquidity Adjustment Facility, the Marginal Standing Facility introduced in May 2011, and refinance, and it is the lender of last resort in a crisis.
• Statement 3 is correct. As the banking regulator and the authority for monetary policy, the RBI advises and directs the banks on monetary and credit matters through circulars, guidelines and policy statements. With all three correct, the official answer is (d). The only risk is reading statement 3 as a regulatory rather than an advisory role, but the RBI does both.

A capital gain is the increase in the value of a capital asset, such as land, buildings, shares or works of art over its acquisition price; under the Income Tax Act it is taxed when the asset is transferred and the gain realised.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. An increase in the sales of a product raises a firm's revenue and perhaps its profit, which is business income from the ordinary course of trade, not a gain on a capital asset.
• Statement 2 is correct. A rise in the value of property owned, from the growth of a town, better connectivity or general inflation in land prices, is the classic capital gain, realised when the property is sold.
• Statement 3 is correct. A painting whose value grows because the artist becomes popular yields a capital gain; works of art are capital assets for this purpose, though personal effects are excluded. With 2 and 3 correct, the official answer is (b). The distinction between income from the flow of a business and a gain in the value of an asset held drops statement 1 at once.

Money supply grows when the central bank creates reserve money, that is when it acquires assets by paying with newly created money.

• Statement 1 is correct. When the central bank buys government securities from the public in an open market operation, it pays with new money, which enters bank deposits and raises reserves, expanding the money supply through the multiplier.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. A deposit of currency in a bank only changes the form of money, from currency to demand deposits, but broad money, which counts both, does not change.
• Statement 3 is correct. Government borrowing from the central bank, through ad hoc treasury bills or the central bank's purchase of its bonds, is monetisation of the deficit: the government spends money that the central bank has created, and reserve money rises.
• Statement 4 is incorrect. A sale of government securities to the public by the central bank withdraws money from circulation, contracting money supply; it is the reverse of statement 1. With 1 and 3 correct, the official answer is (c).
• Statements 1 and 4 are opposites and cannot both be right; picking 1 leaves (a) or (c).

Foreign Direct Investment is investment by a non resident that gives a lasting interest in and significant influence over the management of an enterprise; the international benchmark, used by the IMF and the RBI, treats a holding of ten per cent or more of the equity as direct investment. Foreign portfolio investment, by contrast, is a financial investment in shares or bonds without such a controlling interest.

• Item 1 is correct: a subsidiary of a foreign company in India, set up or acquired by the parent, is direct investment.
• Item 2 is correct: a majority foreign equity holding in an Indian company is well above the threshold and gives management control.
• Item 3 is correct: a company exclusively financed by a foreign company, a wholly owned subsidiary, is the purest form of direct investment, permitted under the automatic route in many sectors at the date of this paper.
• Item 4 is incorrect: portfolio investment, by foreign institutional investors buying small stakes through the stock market, is precisely what FDI is distinguished from. With 1, 2 and 3 correct, the official answer is (d). Excluding item 4 alone leaves (d).

In a market determined exchange rate system, the price of a currency is set by the demand for it and its supply in the foreign exchange market.

• Item 1 is incorrect: the World Bank lends for development and has no role in deciding exchange rates.
• Item 2 is correct: foreigners need a country's currency to pay for its goods and services, so strong demand for its exports raises demand for the currency and its price.
• Item 3 is correct: the stability of the government affects the confidence of foreign investors, and political instability prompts capital outflows and depreciation, while stability draws capital in.
• Item 4 is excluded by the key: the economic potential of a country is a long run attribute, whereas the exchange rate is settled by actual flows of trade and capital at a given time. With 2 and 3 taken as correct, the official answer is (b). The item is not clean, since expectations of growth do draw investment, but a candidate sure that the World Bank plays no role is left with (b) or (c), and item 2 settles (b).

The Lead Bank Scheme was introduced by the RBI in December 1969, on the recommendations of the Study Group chaired by D.R. Gadgil and the Committee of Bankers chaired by F.K.F. Nariman, after the nationalisation of fourteen banks. Its aim was area based development through banking: each district was allotted to one bank, the lead bank, which surveyed the district's credit needs, opened branches in unbanked areas, and coordinated the credit plans of all banks and financial institutions there with the government's development programmes.

• Option (c), individual banks adopting particular districts for intensive development, is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because the scheme gave one bank responsibility for coordination in each district, not offices of big banks in every district.
• Option (b) is wrong because the scheme sought coordination among banks, not competition.
• Option (d) is wrong because deposit mobilisation was one activity among many; the defining aim was district development through credit planning. The official answer is (c). A candidate who knows the scheme's idea of a district adopted by a bank chooses (c).

None of the three was introduced by the English.

• Item 1 is incorrect: assessment of land revenue by the nature of the soil and the quality of crops predates the British by centuries. Sher Shah Sur classified land as good, middling and bad to fix the state's share, and Akbar's revenue minister Raja Todar Mal developed this into the zabt system, with land graded as polaj, parauti, chachar and banjar by continuity of cultivation.
• Item 2 is incorrect: mobile field artillery was used in India by Babur at the first battle of Panipat in 1526, where his guns, mounted on carts, decided the battle against Ibrahim Lodi.
• Item 3 is incorrect: tobacco and red chillies, both plants of the Americas, were brought to India by the Portuguese in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The official answer is (d). Each practice is commonly associated with colonial rule, but the route is the date: knowing Babur's artillery at Panipat or the Portuguese origin of chilli strikes out the options containing them, and only (d) remains once all three are seen as pre British.

Guilds, known as shreni, puga or nigama, were associations of merchants and artisans of the same craft or trade, and they reached their height in the post Mauryan and Gupta centuries, when inscriptions at Nasik record guilds accepting endowments and paying interest.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. There is no evidence of guilds being registered with a central authority or of the king acting as their chief administrator; they were autonomous corporate bodies with their own heads, the shreshthin, and the lawgivers from Gautama to Manu asked the king to respect and enforce the laws and customs of the guilds rather than to run them.
• Statement 2 is correct: the guild laid down the rules of work, the quality of its products, the wages of its members and the prices of its goods.
• Statement 3 is correct: guilds exercised judicial authority over their own members, and the Narada and Brihaspati smritis recognise guild courts among the tribunals whose decisions the king upheld. With 2 and 3 correct, the official answer is (c). Rejecting state registration removes (a) and (d), and the judicial power settles (c).

The Constitution distributes legislative powers through three lists in the Seventh Schedule, read with Articles 245 to 254: the Union List, the State List and the Concurrent List. That scheme is taken from the Government of India Act, 1935, which created an all India federation in law, never brought into force at the centre, with a Federal Legislative List, a Provincial Legislative List and a Concurrent Legislative List.

• Option (c) is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because the Morley Minto Reforms of 1909 enlarged the legislative councils and introduced separate electorates for Muslims; they did not divide powers.
• Option (b) is wrong because the Montagu Chelmsford reforms, the Government of India Act, 1919, divided subjects into central and provincial lists and brought in dyarchy in the provinces.
• Option (d) is wrong because the Indian Independence Act, 1947 transferred power and created two dominions, with no scheme of distribution of its own. The official answer is (c). Knowing that the 1935 Act is the largest single source of the Constitution is enough to choose it.

India had the fifth largest coal reserves in the world at the date of this paper, yet imported around a hundred million tonnes a year because of the quantity and quality of domestic coal.

• Statement 1 is incorrect. India has no policy of conserving its own coal and importing for present use; domestic production was the preferred source, imports filling only the gap.
• Statement 2 is correct. Most electricity came from coal fired plants, and new capacity added in the Eleventh Plan outran domestic supply, held back by slow mining approvals, land acquisition and transport bottlenecks, so power producers had to import thermal coal.
• Statement 3 is correct. Indian coal is largely of high ash, low grade non coking variety, and the country's reserves of good coking coal, needed for blast furnaces in steel making, are small; steel plants therefore import most of their coking coal, chiefly from Australia. With 2 and 3 correct, the official answer is (b). Knowing either reason rejects statement 1 and leaves (b). Since then imports have continued to rise, and coking coal is still largely imported.

The pole star, Polaris, lies almost exactly above the Earth's North Pole, very close to the point about which the night sky appears to turn, so in the northern hemisphere it always marks true north. A person who faces the pole star is facing north; east is then on the right hand and west on the left. To walk east, he must turn so that north is on his left, that is, walk with the pole star to his left.

• Option (c) is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because walking towards the pole star would take him north, not east.
• Option (b) is wrong because walking away from it would take him south.
• Option (d) is wrong because keeping the pole star to the right means north is on the right hand, as when one faces west, so he would walk away from his village. The official answer is (c). Drawing a compass rose with north at the top and turning to face east settles it in seconds; the only trap is the reversal in (d).

The rare earths are the fifteen lanthanides with scandium and yttrium. Most are not rare in the crust; they occur dispersed and are costly to separate, which concentrated their production in a few places.

• Statement 1 is correct. China produced over ninety per cent of the world's rare earths at the date of this paper, in 2010 sharply cut its export quotas and halted shipments to Japan during the boat collision dispute near the Senkaku islands in September 2010.
• Statement 2 is incorrect. Rare earths are found in many countries besides China, Australia, Canada and Chile, among them the United States, Russia, Brazil and India, where the monazite beach sands of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Odisha are processed by Indian Rare Earths Limited.
• Statement 3 is correct. They are essential to modern electronics and clean energy, in permanent magnets for motors and wind turbines and in batteries for hybrid cars. With 1 and 3 correct, the official answer is (c). Knowing that India itself has rare earths rejects statement 2. Since then China's quotas were ruled against at the WTO in 2014 and lifted in 2015, and in 2025 it imposed fresh export controls on several rare earths and magnets.

Project Tiger was launched in 1973 with nine tiger reserves, and three of the four protected areas named were among them.

• Item 1 is correct: Bandipur in Karnataka, part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, was one of the original nine.
• Item 2 is incorrect: Bhitarkanika in Odisha is a national park and wildlife sanctuary in the mangrove delta of the Brahmani and Baitarani rivers, a Ramsar site known for the saltwater crocodile, but it is not a tiger reserve; Odisha's tiger reserves are Similipal and Satkosia.
• Item 3 is correct: Manas in Assam, on the Bhutan border, a World Heritage Site, was one of the original nine.
• Item 4 is correct: the Sundarbans in West Bengal, the largest mangrove forest in the world, with a tiger population adapted to the tidal swamps, was another of the first nine. With 1, 3 and 4 correct, the official answer is (b). Knowing that Bhitarkanika is a crocodile and mangrove sanctuary, not a tiger reserve, leaves only (b); the trap is that it and the Sundarbans are both mangrove forests.

• Statement 1 is correct. The southwest monsoon sets in over Kerala around 1 June and advances northwards, reaching the northern plains in late June and the far northwest, west Rajasthan, about mid July, while its withdrawal runs in the opposite direction, beginning in the northwest in September and leaving the south last, by October and December. Arriving later and leaving earlier, the monsoon lasts a shorter time in the north, from over four months on the Kerala coast to about two months in west Rajasthan.
• Statement 2 is correct. The Bay of Bengal branch enters the northern plains from the east and moves up the Ganga valley towards the west, losing moisture as it travels away from the sea, so annual rainfall falls from more than 150 centimetres in West Bengal and about 100 to 120 centimetres in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh to around 60 to 70 centimetres near Delhi and much less in western Rajasthan. Both statements being correct, the answer is (c). The single idea of a monsoon advancing from the south and the east and withdrawing in the opposite direction explains both statements.

The tropical savanna, or Sudan type, climate, Aw in the Koppen scheme, lies between about 5 and 20 degrees north and south of the Equator, in the Llanos of Venezuela, the Campos of Brazil, the Sudan region and East Africa and northern Australia. Its defining feature is a seasonal rhythm: a wet season in the hot summer, when the rain belt of the intertropical convergence zone moves over the region, and a dry season in the cooler months when the belt moves away.

• Option (d), a definite dry and wet season, is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because rainfall throughout the year is the mark of the equatorial climate, Af.
• Option (b) is wrong because rain in winter only characterises the Mediterranean climate, on the western margins of continents around 30 to 40 degrees latitude.
• Option (c) is wrong because in the savanna the dry season is long and harsh, often several months, which is why trees are scattered and tall grasses dominate. The official answer is (d). Matching each option to its climate type finds (d) at once.

Under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 national parks carry the strictest protection among Indian protected areas. Section 35 provides that no grazing of livestock is permitted in a national park, and once a park is notified no rights, including rights to collect forest produce, may remain in it.

• Option (b) is therefore correct.
• Option (a) is wrong because biosphere reserves, under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme, have a core zone kept free of disturbance but buffer and transition zones in which local people live and use resources sustainably.
• Option (c) is wrong because Ramsar sites are governed by the principle of wise use, which explicitly allows sustainable use of wetland resources by local communities, and listing confers no legal ban in itself.
• Option (d) is wrong because in wildlife sanctuaries the Act allows the Chief Wildlife Warden to permit grazing and certain rights to continue, and the Collector may allow existing rights to remain during settlement. The official answer is (b). The governing distinction is that a national park admits no rights while a sanctuary may admit some.

Pollination, the transfer of pollen from anther to stigma, is carried out by wind and water and, for most flowering plants, by animals, and all three organisms named are pollinators.

• Item 1 is correct: bats pollinate many tropical plants, a syndrome called chiropterophily, in which flowers open at night, are large, pale and strongly scented and produce abundant nectar; the baobab, the durian, many agaves and wild bananas depend on bats.
• Item 2 is correct: bees are the most important pollinators of all, in the wild and in agriculture, responsible for a large share of the pollination of food crops, and carry pollen on their hairy bodies.
• Item 3 is correct: birds pollinate flowers that are usually red or orange, tubular and rich in nectar, a syndrome called ornithophily; in India sunbirds pollinate many plants, as hummingbirds do in the Americas. With all three correct, the official answer is (d). The only doubt might be about bats, but bat pollination of the baobab and of many fruit trees is a standard textbook example, and that settles (d).

The question uses endangered in its broad sense of threatened with extinction, as in the IUCN Red List's threatened categories.

• Option (a) is correct. The Great Indian Bustard was uplisted to Critically Endangered in 2011; the Himalayan musk deer was listed Endangered; the red panda was listed Vulnerable at the date of this paper and was uplisted to Endangered in 2015; and the Asiatic wild ass, whose Indian subspecies survives only in the Little Rann of Kutch, was then listed Endangered.
• Option (b) is wrong because the cheetal and the blue bull, or nilgai, are abundant species, though the Kashmir stag, the hangul, is critically endangered.
• Option (c) is wrong because the rhesus macaque is one of the commonest primates in India, though the snow leopard and the swamp deer are threatened and the sarus crane vulnerable.
• Option (d) is wrong because the blue bull, the Hanuman langur and the cheetal are all common, though the lion tailed macaque is endangered. The official answer is (a). Knowing that cheetal, nilgai, rhesus and langur are abundant strikes out (b), (c) and (d).

Capillarity is the rise of a liquid in a narrow tube or porous material, caused by adhesion between liquid and solid exceeding the liquid's cohesion and surface tension.

• Statement 1 is correct: kerosene rises up the cotton wick of a lamp by capillary action to reach the flame.
• Statement 2 is incorrect: drinking through a straw does not depend on capillarity. Sucking lowers the air pressure inside the straw, and atmospheric pressure on the drink pushes the liquid up; a straw's bore is far too wide for capillary rise to matter.
• Statement 3 is correct: blotting paper is a mesh of fine fibres with tiny pores, and ink is drawn into them by capillary action.
• Statement 4 is correct in the sense intended by the key: water rises through the narrow xylem vessels of plants partly by capillarity, though the main force in tall trees is the transpiration pull acting on a cohesive column of water. With 1, 3 and 4 correct, the official answer is (b). Recognising the straw as a matter of air pressure removes (a), (c) and (d) in one step.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a United Nations backed appraisal completed in 2005, grouped the benefits people obtain from ecosystems into four categories: provisioning services, such as food, fresh water, timber and fibre; regulating services, such as the regulation of climate, floods, disease and water purification; cultural services, the spiritual, recreational and aesthetic benefits; and supporting services, those necessary for the production of all the others, such as nutrient cycling, soil formation and primary production. The question's list adds preserving, which is not a category in the Assessment, as a distractor.

• Option (c), nutrient cycling and crop pollination, is the official answer, (c). Nutrient cycling is the textbook supporting service; pollination, which the Assessment itself lists among regulating services, is placed here with it because it sustains the production of food and of wild plants.
• Option (a) is wrong because the production of food and water is a provisioning service.
• Option (b) is wrong because the control of climate and disease is a regulating service.
• Option (d) is wrong because maintenance of diversity corresponds to the invented preserving category. Only (c) contains a recognised supporting service, nutrient cycling.

Oryx and chiru are both antelopes but of opposite habitats. The oryxes of Arabia and Africa are adapted to hot, arid deserts and semi deserts. The chiru, or Tibetan antelope, Pantholops hodgsonii, lives on the high cold steppes and semi desert plateaus of Tibet, at four to five thousand metres, reaching India only in the Changthang of eastern Ladakh.

• Option (a) is therefore correct.
• Option (b) is wrong on both counts: antelopes have horns, not antlers, which are shed bony structures of deer, and the chiru is poached not for musk, which comes from the musk deer, but for its fine underfur, woven into shahtoosh shawls.
• Option (c) is wrong because the oryx does not occur in India at all, and the chiru is found in Ladakh in the northwest, not the northeast.
• Option (d) falls because (a) is correct. The official answer is (a). Knowing the chiru as the shahtoosh antelope of the Tibetan plateau rejects (b) and (c). Since then the chiru, Endangered at the date of this paper, has been moved to Near Threatened in 2016 after its numbers recovered.

The major causes of biodiversity loss are summed up in the NCERT account as the evil quartet, habitat loss and fragmentation, over exploitation, invasion of alien species and co extinctions, to which climate change is now added.

• Item 1 is correct: global warming shifts climatic zones faster than many species can move or adapt, threatening species of high mountains, polar regions and coral reefs.
• Item 2 is correct: fragmentation breaks large continuous habitats into small isolated patches; species needing large territories, such as tigers and elephants, decline, and small populations lose genetic diversity.
• Item 3 is correct: invasive alien species, such as Lantana and water hyacinth in India or the Nile perch in Lake Victoria, outcompete or prey on native species and have caused many extinctions.
• Item 4 is incorrect: promotion of vegetarianism poses no threat to biodiversity; it reduces the land and water needed for livestock and so the pressure on natural habitats. With 1, 2 and 3 correct, the official answer is (a).
• Item 4 is plainly the odd one out, eliminating (c) and (d), and accepting that climate change threatens species chooses (a) over (b).

• Item 1 is correct: the black necked crane, Grus nigricollis, breeds on the high altitude wetlands of the Tibetan plateau and is found in India in Ladakh, breeding in the Changthang, and in Arunachal Pradesh, where it winters in the Sangti and Zemithang valleys.
• Item 2 is incorrect: the Asiatic cheetah was declared extinct in India in 1952, and at the date of this paper there were no cheetahs in the wild in India.
• Item 3 is correct: several flying squirrels occur naturally in India, among them the Indian giant flying squirrel, the Travancore flying squirrel of the Western Ghats and the Namdapha flying squirrel, known only from Arunachal Pradesh.
• Item 4 is correct: the snow leopard lives in the high Himalaya, from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh. With 1, 3 and 4 correct, the official answer is (b). Knowing only that the cheetah was extinct in India leaves (b) as the one option without item 2. Since then cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa have been released in Kuno National Park from September 2022 under Project Cheetah, so the key's footing has changed.

Soil carbon sequestration means increasing the stock of organic carbon held in the soil, chiefly by adding plant residues and by reducing the oxidation of soil organic matter.

• Item 3 is correct, the practice most widely recognised for this: zero tillage, sowing seed directly into the unploughed field with the previous crop's residue left on the surface, avoids breaking the soil aggregates, which would expose organic matter to oxygen and microbes, so less carbon is lost as carbon dioxide.
• Item 1, contour bunding, is treated by the key as not helping: it is an erosion control measure, embankments along the contours of sloping land to slow runoff and conserve soil and moisture, which protects the topsoil but does not itself add or lock carbon in the soil.
• Item 2, relay cropping, sowing a second crop into a standing first crop before harvest, intensifies land use and saves time but is not a carbon storage practice. With only item 3 accepted, the official answer is (b). Both other practices can reduce carbon loss indirectly; ask which is designed to reduce the oxidation of soil carbon.

Phytoplankton, the microscopic photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria of the surface ocean, produce roughly half of the Earth's primary production and form the base of almost every marine food chain.

• Statement 1 is correct. Through photosynthesis phytoplankton take up dissolved carbon dioxide, and the biological pump carries part of that carbon to the deep ocean as dead cells and the faecal pellets of grazers sink; their destruction would weaken the ocean's role as a carbon sink.
• Statement 2 is correct. Zooplankton graze on phytoplankton, small fish eat zooplankton, and larger fish, seabirds and marine mammals depend on them in turn; without the primary producers, the marine food chains would collapse.
• Statement 3 is incorrect. The density of sea water depends on its temperature, salinity and pressure, not on phytoplankton, whose mass is negligible relative to the water. With 1 and 2 correct, the official answer is (a). Seeing phytoplankton as the producers of the marine ecosystem gives statements 1 and 2, and knowing that density is governed by temperature and salinity rejects statement 3.

India's three resident Gyps vultures, the white rumped, the long billed and the slender billed, declined by more than ninety five per cent from the early 1990s, and research in India and Pakistan in the early 2000s identified the cause as diclofenac, a non steroidal anti inflammatory drug widely used to treat sick and injured livestock. Vultures feeding on carcasses of animals treated shortly before death ingested residues of the drug, which caused kidney failure and visceral gout.

• Option (b) is therefore correct. Veterinary use of diclofenac was banned in India in 2006 and the safe alternative meloxicam was promoted.
• Option (a) is wrong because invasive species destroying nesting sites have played no significant part in the decline.
• Option (c) is wrong because cattle carcasses remained plentiful, and the drug was in the food.
• Option (d) is wrong because the early suspicion of an infectious disease was ruled out by the research. The official answer is (b). Since then, in 2015, multi dose vials of human diclofenac were restricted to single doses to curb misuse, and in 2023 veterinary use of aceclofenac and ketoprofen, also toxic to vultures, was banned.