24 November 2025 · Shift 3

Akbar's Zabt system The Zabt (Dahsala) system, worked out under Akbar by Raja Todar Mal, fixed a cash revenue rate for each crop after measuring the land with the jarib and averaging the produce and prices of the previous ten years. It could therefore be used only where the fields could be surveyed and measured accurately. In Bengal and Gujarat that measurement was not practicable, so Zabt was never introduced there and other modes of assessment continued. In Bengal the rivers shifted course and repeated flooding kept altering the fields; in Gujarat the uneven terrain and unstable cropping made a fixed ten-year average unreliable. Agra, Allahabad, Malwa, Ajmer, Delhi and Lahore were, on the contrary, the core Zabti provinces where the system worked well. Hence the correct option is (b).

Seventh Schedule The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India, read with Article 246, distributes legislative powers between the Union and the States. It contains three lists: the Union List (Parliament alone may legislate), the State List (State Legislatures) and the Concurrent List (both may legislate, Union law prevailing in case of conflict). This three-fold division is the backbone of Indian federalism and keeps law-making authority clear. Centre-State financial relations are dealt with by Articles 268-281 and the Finance Commission, local self-government by the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules, and Emergency provisions by Part XVIII (Articles 352-360). Hence the correct option is (b).

44th Amendment, Emergency The 44th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1978 replaced the vague expression "internal disturbance" in Article 352 with the far narrower ground "armed rebellion". The change was a direct response to the 1975-77 Emergency, which had been proclaimed on the ground of internal disturbance. The same Amendment also required the written advice of the Union Cabinet before a proclamation, and made the rights under Articles 20 and 21 non-suspendable even during an Emergency. The 42nd Amendment, 1976 had moved in the opposite direction by enlarging executive power, so it cannot be the answer; the 43rd Amendment, 1977 dealt with restoring the courts' jurisdiction, and there is no 45th Amendment of 1980 on this subject. Hence the correct option is (b).

IORA Council of Ministers The Indian Ocean Rim Association was set up in 1997 with its Secretariat at Ebene, Mauritius, and works through the Council of Ministers, the Committee of Senior Officials and allied bodies. The Council of Ministers (COM) is the apex, supreme decision-making organ; it meets once a year and approves the Association's policy direction, programmes and budget - so Statement I is correct. The COM is made up of the Foreign Ministers (or the equivalent ministers designated by member states), not exclusively of Finance Ministers - so Statement II is wrong. Hence only Statement I is correct, and the correct option is (a).

Founding of ASEAN ASEAN was formally founded at Bangkok, Thailand, on 8 August 1967 with the signing of the ASEAN Declaration, which is therefore also called the Bangkok Declaration. Its five founding members were Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia joined later, and Timor-Leste was admitted as the eleventh member on 26 October 2025. The place of founding must not be confused with the seat of the organisation: the ASEAN Secretariat is at Jakarta, Indonesia, which is why option (a) tempts many candidates. Phnom Penh and Manila have hosted ASEAN summits but had no part in its founding. Hence the correct option is (b).

Delhi Waqf Board CEO In January 2025, IAS officer Azimul Haque was appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Delhi Waqf Board, the appointment being approved by the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, V. K. Saxena. The post had been lying vacant since late November 2024, and the vacancy had stalled the Board's routine work, including the release of salaries to Imams, Muezzins and other staff. The Delhi Waqf Board is a statutory body constituted under the Waqf Act, 1995; it administers waqf properties — mosques, dargahs, graveyards and endowed land — in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, and the CEO is its chief administrative officer. Hence option (b) is correct.

PM-YUVA 3.0 scheme PM-YUVA 3.0 — the Prime Minister's Scheme for Mentoring Young Authors — was launched on 11 March 2025 by the Ministry of Education. Within the Ministry it is run by the Department of Higher Education, with the National Book Trust, India as the implementing agency. Fifty authors below 30 years of age are selected through an All India Contest and are mentored for six months, with a scholarship of ₹50,000 per month. The third edition was built around three themes — Contribution of Indian Diaspora in Nation Building, Indian Knowledge System, and Makers of Modern India (1950-2025). Since the scheme concerns authorship, reading and book culture, it belongs to the Ministry of Education and not to the Youth Affairs, Health or Social Justice ministries. Hence option (b) is correct.

Centres of Excellence for Skilling The Union Budget 2025-26 announced five National Centres of Excellence (NCoE) for skilling, and the Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister, approved them on 7 May 2025. They come under the Centrally Sponsored National Scheme for ITI Upgradation, with a total outlay of ₹60,000 crore — ₹30,000 crore Central share, ₹20,000 crore State share and ₹10,000 crore industry share. The five centres are being developed by upgrading the National Skill Training Institutes at Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kanpur and Ludhiana, each with a global partner and a specific industrial sector. Their aim is to train trainers and to design industry-aligned courses so that ITI graduates match current industrial demand. Hence option (b) is correct.

Sports formats The question asks for a game that has both an individual format and a pair or team format. Badminton is played as singles, with one player on each side, and also as doubles, with two players on each side, in men's, women's and mixed categories. Football (11 a side), Volleyball (6 a side) and Kabaddi (7 a side) are team games only; under standard rules none of them can be played by a single player. Hence option (a) is correct.

First individual Olympic gold India's first individual Olympic gold medal came in Shooting, when Abhinav Bindra won the men's 10 m Air Rifle event at the Beijing Olympics, 2008. Before that, every Olympic gold won by India had come in a team event — the eight gold medals of the men's hockey team, the first of them at Amsterdam in 1928. The only other individual Olympic gold for India so far is Neeraj Chopra's in the men's javelin throw at Tokyo 2020, held in 2021. Hence option (b) is correct.

MATSYA 6000 submersible MATSYA 6000 is India's indigenous manned deep-sea submersible, built for the Samudrayaan project of the Deep Ocean Mission. It is designed to carry three persons in a titanium personnel sphere to a depth of 6,000 m in the Indian Ocean, for up to 12 hours of normal endurance. It is being developed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai, under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, mainly to survey polymetallic nodules and other deep-sea mineral and biodiversity resources. Chandrayaan, Shukrayaan and Gaganyaan are ISRO's space missions to the Moon, Venus and human spaceflight respectively, so they are unrelated to a submersible. Hence option (b) is correct.

Sant Singaji Sant Singaji, the saint-poet of the Malwa-Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh, composed his devotional verse in the Nirguni tradition of the Bhakti movement. The Nirguni stream worships a formless, attribute-less (nirguna) God, rejects idol worship and ritualism, and preaches equality and inner devotion in the language of the common people. His compositions, sung even today as Singaji bhajans, place him with Kabir, Guru Ravidas and Dadu Dayal; a large annual fair is held at his samadhi in Khandwa district. Bhakti-Kavya is a broad literary label rather than a specific tradition, while Dhrupad and Qawwali are musical forms, not schools of devotional thought. Hence option (b) is correct.

Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar The novel Siddhartha: The Boy Who Became the Buddha was written by Advait Kottary, and it won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2025 in English. It is a work of historical fiction that retells the early life of Prince Siddhartha in Kapilavastu and his journey to enlightenment as the Buddha. The Yuva Puraskar is given by the Sahitya Akademi every year to a writer aged 35 or below, in each of the 24 languages recognised by the Akademi, and carries a cash prize of ₹50,000 with an engraved copper plaque. Hence option (b) is correct.

Meenakshi Amman Temple The Meenakshi Amman Temple stands on the south bank of the Vaigai river at Madurai in Tamil Nadu and is dedicated to Goddess Meenakshi (Parvati) and Lord Sundareswarar (Shiva). The original temple was raised under the Pandya ruler Kulasekhara, who is traditionally credited with founding both the temple and the city of Madurai around it. The temple as seen today, with its towering gopurams, the Hall of a Thousand Pillars and the Golden Lotus tank, is largely the work of the Nayaka rulers of Madurai in the 16th-17th centuries, especially Vishwanatha Nayak and Tirumala Nayak. Rajaraja Chola built the Brihadeeswarar temple at Thanjavur, Krishna Deva Raya was a Vijayanagara emperor and Mahendravarman I was a Pallava king, so none of them fits. Hence option (b) is correct.

Dhamoni Urs Fair The Dhamoni Urs Fair is held every year at Dhamoni in the Sagar district of Madhya Pradesh. An urs marks the death anniversary of a Sufi saint; this one is held at the dargah of Hazrat Shah Mastan Ali Baba (Bala Pir) inside the old Dhamoni fort. The fair is a well-known example of the syncretic culture of Bundelkhand, as devotees of every community take part in it. Hence option (b) is correct.

Shikaar Nritya Shikaar Nritya is a tribal folk dance of Gujarat, performed in the Dharampur belt of the Valsad region by the tribal communities of south Gujarat. As the name suggests, it acts out a hunt: dancers carry bows, arrows and spears, and their movements imitate the tracking and chasing of the prey, celebrating courage and group coordination. Garba, Dandiya Raas, Bhavai, Tippani and Padhar are the other well-known folk dances of Gujarat. Hence option (b) is correct.

Weather satellites Weather watching needs the same patch of the Earth to be photographed again and again at short intervals, so the satellite must appear to stay still above that patch. A geo-stationary satellite is placed about 36,000 km above the equator, where its orbital period equals the Earth's rotation period of 24 hours, so it seems fixed over one point. From that vantage point it sends images every few minutes and lets meteorologists follow cloud build-up, cyclone tracks and storm movement in near real time; India's INSAT and GSAT weather payloads work this way. Navigation satellites give position fixes, and scientific satellites carry research experiments, so neither is meant for daily forecasting. Hence option (b) is correct.

Mechanical energy Mechanical energy is the energy a body has because of its motion or its position, and it is of two kinds. Kinetic energy is the energy of motion, $K=\frac{1}{2}m{v}^2$, and potential energy is the energy stored by position or configuration, for gravity U=mgh. Total mechanical energy is their sum, E=K+U, and for a body acted on only by conservative forces this sum stays constant — a falling stone loses U and gains exactly that much K. Hence option (b) is correct.

NFRA-IIT Kanpur hackathon The National Financial Reporting Authority partnered with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur to organise a hackathon on Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI, announced at the end of March 2025 and run in April 2025. Participants were asked to build AI tools that can read financial statements and audit reports and turn that information into simple, usable summaries and insights. NFRA is the audit regulator set up in 2018 under Section 132 of the Companies Act, 2013, to recommend accounting and auditing standards and to oversee the quality of audits of large companies. Hence option (b) is correct.

Peshwa Baji Rao I Baji Rao I was the son of Balaji Vishwanath, the first Peshwa to make the office powerful and hereditary under Chhatrapati Shahu. On his father's death in 1720 Baji Rao became Peshwa at the age of about twenty and held the post till 1740, expanding Maratha power into Malwa, Bundelkhand and Gujarat with swift cavalry campaigns. His victories at Palkhed (1728) over the Nizam and at Bhopal (1737) made the Marathas the dominant power in central India; he was succeeded by his son Balaji Baji Rao, called Nanasaheb. Shahu Maharaj was the Chhatrapati who appointed the Peshwas, Raghunath Rao was a later Peshwa of the family and Moropant Trimbak Pingle was Shivaji's Peshwa, so none of them was his father. Hence option (b) is correct.

Capital vs revenue expenditure In the government budget, capital expenditure is spending that either creates an asset for the government or reduces a liability of the government. Buying machinery and building roads create physical assets, and investment in government companies creates a financial asset, so all three are capital expenditure. Subsidies are recurring payments that neither create an asset nor cut a liability; they only meet the running needs of the government, so they are revenue expenditure. Hence option (b) is correct. Tip: ask two questions of any item — does it create an asset, or does it reduce a liability? If the answer to both is no, the item is revenue expenditure.

Government of India Act 1858 The Act passed by the British Parliament in 1858 is the Government of India Act, 1858, which ended the rule of the East India Company and transferred the government of India to the British Crown. Statement I is correct: the Governor-General of India was now also given the title of Viceroy, that is the personal representative of the Crown, and Lord Canning became the first Viceroy. Statement II is correct as well: the policy declared through the Act and Queen Victoria's Proclamation of 1858 at Allahabad promised non-interference in the religious beliefs, social practices and customs of Indians. The same Act created the office of the Secretary of State for India, assisted by a 15-member Council of India, and abolished the Board of Control and the Court of Directors. Hence option (d) is correct.

Rajya Sabha term A member of the Rajya Sabha holds office for a term of six years. The Rajya Sabha is a permanent House and is never dissolved; instead one-third of its members retire every two years and an equal number is elected, so the House renews itself continuously. This is why the Rajya Sabha is called a continuing chamber, while the Lok Sabha has a term of five years and can be dissolved earlier by the President, or extended by one year at a time during a National Emergency. Hence option (c) is correct.

Census Act 1948 The Census of India is carried out under the Census Act, 1948, which gives the operation its legal basis, makes answering the questions compulsory and keeps individual records confidential. The work is done by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, which functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The first non-synchronous census in India was taken in 1872 under Lord Mayo and the first synchronous census in 1881 under Lord Ripon, since when it has been decennial. Hence option (a) is correct.

Hydrochloric acid in stomach Hydrochloric acid is secreted by the parietal (oxyntic) cells of the gastric glands and pulls the pH of the stomach down to about 1.5 to 3.5. This strongly acidic medium is exactly what the gastric enzyme needs: it converts inactive pepsinogen into active pepsin, which then splits proteins into smaller peptides. The acid also kills most bacteria that come in with the food, so the main role of HCl is to provide an acidic medium for enzyme action. It therefore does not neutralise food or keep the stomach alkaline, and far from preventing protein digestion it is what makes protein digestion possible. Hence option (c) is correct.