24 November 2025 · Shift 1

Gond kingdom of Garha-Katanga Dalpat Shah, the Gond ruler of Garha-Katanga in central India, was married to Rani Durgavati, a Chandel princess of Mahoba. After his early death she ruled as regent for her minor son Vir Narayan and is remembered as an able administrator who improved revenue collection and built tanks, reservoirs and temples. In 1564 she faced the Mughal army of Asaf Khan at Narrai and, wounded and unwilling to be taken prisoner, took her own life. Rudrama Devi was a Kakatiya ruler of Warangal, Ahilyabai Holkar was the Holkar queen of Indore, and Chandramani Devi was the mother of Swami Vivekananda. So option (b) is correct.

Fundamental Duties Article 51A, inserted by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee, lists the Fundamental Duties; the 86th Amendment, 2002 added the duty about education. Clause (f) requires every citizen 'to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture', which is what option (a) states. Avoiding corrupt practices, helping the injured in road accidents and respecting other citizens' freedom of expression are desirable civic acts, but none of them is listed in Article 51A. So option (a) is correct.

Writ jurisdiction Certiorari literally means 'to be certified'; a superior court issues it to call up the record of a subordinate court or tribunal and quash an order it has already passed beyond its jurisdiction or against natural justice. Prohibition also deals with excess of jurisdiction, but it is preventive — it stops proceedings that are still going on, while Certiorari is curative and cancels a decision that has been made. Mandamus commands a public authority to perform its legal duty and Quo Warranto asks a person by what authority he holds a public office. So option (d) is correct.

BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement BBIN stands for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal, so the letter 'I' in the acronym is India. The BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement was signed at Thimphu on 15 June 2015 to let passenger, personal and cargo vehicles move across the four countries without trans-shipment at the borders. Its aim is to boost trade and people-to-people contact in the eastern sub-region of South Asia, and it works through separate Passenger and Cargo Protocols. Bhutan could not ratify it as its Parliament withheld approval in 2017, so Bangladesh, India and Nepal are taking it forward. Hence option (a) is correct.

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation formally came into existence on 15 June 2001 at Shanghai. It grew out of the 'Shanghai Five' of 1996 — China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — and became the SCO when Uzbekistan joined as the sixth member. Its declared aims are to fight the 'three evils' of terrorism, separatism and extremism and to promote economic and cultural cooperation in Eurasia; its secretariat is in Beijing. India and Pakistan became full members in 2017 and Iran in 2023. So option (b) is correct.

Current affairs — appointments Ashwani Lohani assumed charge as the Director of the Prime Ministers Museum and Library (PMML) in June 2025. He is a retired officer of the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers who had earlier headed the Railway Board and Air India; the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet cleared his name for a three-year term. The PMML stands on the Teen Murti campus in New Delhi. Teen Murti House was the official residence of Jawaharlal Nehru and was turned into the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library after his death in 1964; it was renamed the Prime Ministers Museum and Library in 2023. Amitabh Kant, the former CEO of NITI Aayog and India's G20 Sherpa, is the tempting distractor here, but he holds no post at the PMML. Hence the correct option is (a).

Current affairs — gender budgeting The National Consultation on Gender Budgeting was held on 19 June 2025 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. It was organised by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and was the first consultation of its kind on the subject. Union Minister Annpurna Devi launched the Gender Budgeting Knowledge Hub there — a digital repository that helps ministries and States design and track gender-responsive budgets. Officials of about 40 central ministries and departments and 19 States took part, along with UN Women and the Asian Development Bank. Hence the correct option is (a).

Union Budget 2025 schemes The Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Scheme, announced in the Union Budget 2025-26, is executed by the Ministry of Education. The scheme provides digital-form textbooks in Indian languages for school and higher education so that students can study academic and technical subjects in their own language. It carries forward the National Education Policy 2020, which places learning in the mother tongue at the centre of school and college teaching. Because it is purely an academic, curriculum-linked programme, the ministries of culture, information and broadcasting and home affairs have no role in running it. Hence the correct option is (b).

Kho-Kho playing field A Kho-Kho match is played on a rectangular field. The standard field is 27 m long and 16 m wide, divided lengthwise by a central lane with a wooden pole fixed at each end of that lane. A team has 12 players of whom 9 take the field; a chaser may not change direction once he starts and passes the chase by touching a team-mate's back and shouting 'Kho'. The first Kho-Kho World Cup was held in New Delhi in January 2025, where India won both the men's and the women's title. Hence the correct option is (a).

India at the Asian Games Athletics has given India the largest number of Asian Games medals of any single sport. India has competed since the very first edition, held in New Delhi in 1951, and athletics alone has yielded well over 250 medals across the editions. At Hangzhou 2022 (held in 2023) athletics again led the way with 29 medals out of India's record haul of 107. Milkha Singh and P. T. Usha built this tradition and Neeraj Chopra carries it forward today; shooting and hockey stand lower in the sport-wise tally. Hence the correct option is (c).

Species rediscovery — velvet worm The velvet worm Typhloperipatus williamsoni was rediscovered in Arunachal Pradesh, in the Siang valley, after a gap of more than a century. It was first collected during the Abor Expedition of 1911-12 and had not been recorded again anywhere until this find. It is the only velvet worm known from India, which is why the north-eastern location is the key fact in the question. Velvet worms (phylum Onychophora) are called living fossils: they walk on soft unjointed legs called lobopods, breathe through tracheal pores and squirt a sticky protein slime to trap prey at night, and are treated as a link between annelids and arthropods. Hence the correct option is (b).

Folk theatre of Chhattisgarh In the folk tradition of Chhattisgarh a theatrical or dramatic performance is called Gammat. Gammat pieces are comic skits and social satire, staged through the night inside the larger Nacha folk-theatre form, in the Chhattisgarhi dialect and to the beat of the mandar and manjira; male actors play the female roles. Tamasha and Lavani belong to Maharashtra and Nautanki to Uttar Pradesh, so none of them can be the Chhattisgarhi term. Hence the correct option is (b).

Books and authors The book Nehru's Hero: Dilip Kumar in the Life of India was written by Meghnad Desai. Lord Meghnad Desai is an economist and a member of the British House of Lords; in this book he reads the career of the actor Dilip Kumar as a mirror of the Nehruvian idea of India. His other well-known titles include The Rediscovery of India, Marx's Revenge and Who Wrote the Bhagavadgita. Hence the correct option is (d).

Temples of Hampi The Virupaksha Temple at Hampi is dedicated to Lord Shiva, worshipped there as Virupaksha, the consort of the local goddess Pampa. Hampi lies on the bank of the Tungabhadra in the Vijayanagara district of Karnataka and was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire. The shrine began as a small temple around the 7th century and grew into a huge complex under the Vijayanagara kings; its towering eastern gopuram was raised by Lakkana Dandesha, a chief under Deva Raya II. The Group of Monuments at Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Hence the correct option is (a).

Festivals of Kerala The annual Vettukad festival of Kerala belongs to the religious tradition of the Christian community. It is celebrated at the Madre de Deus Church at Vettukad in Thiruvananthapuram and is popularly called the Feast of Christ the King. The ten-day feast, a tradition about five centuries old, closes with a grand procession and draws pilgrims of every faith, which is why it is often cited as an example of communal harmony in Kerala. Hence the correct option is (c).

Folk dances and States Chhatrari is the dance traditionally associated with Himachal Pradesh. It is performed at Chhatrari village of Chamba district before the Shakti Devi temple; Nati, Kayang, Dandras and the martial Thoda are the other well-known Himachali dances. Cheraw is the Mizo bamboo dance, Bihu belongs to Assam and Lavani to Maharashtra, so all three are ruled out. Hence the correct option is (c).

Speed of light, Sun to Earth Sunlight needs about 8 minutes to reach the Earth. Mean distance of the Earth from the Sun $=1.5\times {10}^8$ km and the speed of light $=3\times {10}^5$ km/s. Time $=\frac{1.5\times {10}^8}{3\times {10}^5}=500$ s 500 s $=\frac{500}{60}\approx 8.3$ min, that is about 8 minutes 20 seconds. So the sunlight seen at any moment actually left the Sun more than eight minutes earlier; hence the correct option is (c).

Change of state — deposition The change of state in which a gas turns straight into a solid, without becoming a liquid in between, is called deposition. It is the exact reverse of sublimation, in which a solid turns straight into vapour; for that reason deposition is also called desublimation. Frost forming on a cold window pane and ice crystals growing inside clouds are everyday examples — the vapour loses heat so fast that it settles directly as a solid. Melting is solid to liquid and solidification is liquid to solid, so both of them pass through the liquid state and cannot be the answer. Hence the correct option is (b).

Natural (geologic) hydrogen The clean energy resource highlighted in May 2025 is natural hydrogen, also called white, gold or geologic hydrogen. A study reported that hydrogen generated and trapped naturally inside the Earth's crust could, in principle, meet the world's energy demand for roughly 170,000 years. This hydrogen forms on its own — mainly by serpentinisation, in which water reacts with iron-rich rock, and by radiolysis, in which radiation splits water — so it is drilled for like natural gas instead of being manufactured. That makes it carbon-free and far cheaper than green hydrogen (made by electrolysis) or blue hydrogen (made from natural gas with carbon capture); promising finds have been reported from Mali, the United States, France and Australia. Hence the correct option is (a).

Anglo-Mysore Wars The Third Anglo-Mysore War was fought from 1790 to 1792. It began when Tipu Sultan attacked Travancore, an ally of the English, and Lord Cornwallis answered by forming a triple alliance of the Company, the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad. The allied armies advanced on Seringapatam and the war ended with the Treaty of Seringapatam in 1792. Tipu had to surrender nearly half his territory, pay an indemnity of about ₹3.3 crore and hand over two of his sons as hostages, which tilted the balance of power in the south towards the British. Hence the correct option is (b).

Repressive Acts of Lord Lytton The Indian Arms Act was passed in 1878. Enacted under Viceroy Lord Lytton, it made a licence compulsory for an Indian to keep, carry or deal in arms, while Europeans and Anglo-Indians were largely exempted — that open discrimination is what made the Act hated. It grew out of the fear of another rising after the Revolt of 1857 and was passed in the very year of the Vernacular Press Act, 1878, which gagged Indian-language newspapers. Hence the correct option is (b).

Attorney General of India The Attorney General of India continues in office as long as the President wishes — he holds office during the pleasure of the President. Article 76 provides for his appointment by the President; the Constitution fixes no term and lays down no removal procedure, so he may be asked to go at any time and by convention resigns when the government changes. He is the first law officer of the Government of India, may take part in the proceedings of either House of Parliament and of any parliamentary committee, but has no right to vote. A judge of the Supreme Court, the Chief Justice included, can be removed only through the impeachment procedure of Article 124, so option (c) fails the test. Hence the correct option is (b).

Phases of population growth The years 1901-1921 form the stagnant phase of India's population growth. Birth rates were high, but death rates were just as high — famines, poor medical facilities and epidemics such as the influenza of 1918-19 wiped out the gains. The Census of 1921 actually recorded a fall in population, a growth rate of about $-0.03\%$, and that is why 1921 is called the Year of the Great Divide or the demographic divide. After 1921 mortality began to decline while fertility stayed high, so India moved into a phase of steady growth. Hence the correct option is (b).

Public debt and fiscal deficit Borrowing year after year adds up to a build-up of public debt. Each year's fiscal deficit is financed by issuing treasury bills and dated securities; these unpaid claims accumulate and form the stock of public debt. A large stock forces a bigger interest payment out of every budget, leaving less for capital spending and, in the extreme, creating a debt trap in which fresh loans are raised only to service old interest. Heavy government borrowing tends to crowd private investment out rather than expand it, so option (c) states the very opposite of what happens. Hence the correct option is (a).

Endocrine control of puberty Puberty in human females is brought about mainly by the hormones of the ovaries. The hypothalamus releases GnRH, which makes the pituitary secrete FSH and LH; these act on the ovaries, which then pour out oestrogen and progesterone. Oestrogen produces the secondary sexual characters — development of the breasts, widening of the pelvis and the first menstrual flow, called menarche. The pancreas and the thyroid gland control metabolism and the pineal gland controls the sleep cycle, so none of them starts puberty. Hence the correct option is (b).