26 November 2025 · Shift 2

Iqta system, Delhi Sultanate Under the Iqta system the Sultan assigned the revenue of a territory, called an Iqta, to an officer known as the Muqti or Iqtadar. The Muqti's primary duty was to command and maintain the troops of that territory and to keep law and order there on the Sultan's behalf. He collected the revenue, spent part of it on his soldiers and his own salary, and sent the surplus, called fawazil, to the central treasury. The Iqta was neither hereditary nor owned by him - Muqtis were transferred regularly, which kept real power with the Sultan. Hence option (d) is correct.

Medieval rulers of Kashmir Queen Didda ruled Kashmir from 980 to 1003 CE. She first acted as regent for her son and then for her grandsons, and afterwards ruled in her own name, suppressing repeated revolts of the nobles. She belonged to the Lohara family and passed the throne to her nephew Samgramaraja, who founded the Lohara dynasty of Kashmir; her reign is described in Kalhana's Rajatarangini. Rani Durgavati ruled Gondwana, Razia Sultana ruled the Delhi Sultanate (1236-1240) and Chand Bibi defended Ahmednagar, so none of them fits Kashmir. Hence option (b) is correct.

Writ jurisdiction of High Courts Article 226 empowers every High Court to issue the five writs - habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari. Its scope is wider than Article 32, because a High Court may issue a writ both for the enforcement of fundamental rights and 'for any other purpose', that is, for ordinary legal rights as well. Article 229 deals with the officers, servants and expenses of High Courts; Article 131 gives the Supreme Court its original jurisdiction; Article 31, the old right to property, was repealed by the 44th Amendment, 1978. Hence option (c) is correct.

ASEAN Secretariat The ASEAN Secretariat was set up in 1976, by an agreement signed at the first ASEAN Summit held at Bali on 24 February 1976, and it works from Jakarta, Indonesia. ASEAN itself is older - it was founded on 8 August 1967 by the Bangkok Declaration, which is why 1967 is the tempting wrong option; that date is now observed as ASEAN Day. The five founders were Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand; Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia joined later, and Timor-Leste became the eleventh member in October 2025. Its motto is 'One Vision, One Identity, One Community'. Hence option (c) is correct.

Padma Vibhushan 2024 M. Venkaiah Naidu received the Padma Vibhushan in 2024 in the field of Public Affairs. He was the 13th Vice-President of India (2017-2022) and had earlier been a Union Minister and a member of the Rajya Sabha. Five Padma Vibhushan awards were announced in 2024, and none of the other three names in the options is among them. Hence option (b) is correct.

Appointment of Governors Ajay Kumar Bhalla, a retired IAS officer of the 1984 batch, took oath as the Governor of Manipur on 3 January 2025 at the Raj Bhavan in Imphal. He took charge when Manipur was passing through prolonged ethnic unrest, and President's Rule was proclaimed in the state the following month. Before this appointment he was the Union Home Secretary from August 2019 to August 2024, and in August 2025 he was also given the additional charge of Governor of Nagaland. Hence option (b) is correct.

Government schemes The 'Scheme for Strengthening the Medical Device Industry' was launched on 8 November 2024 by Union Minister J. P. Nadda and is administered by the Department of Pharmaceuticals under the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers. It carries an outlay of ₹500 crore for 2024-25 to 2026-27 and has five sub-schemes: common facilities for medical-device clusters, marginal investment to cut import dependence, skill development, support for clinical studies, and industry promotion. The aim is to reduce India's heavy import dependence in medical devices and to help the market grow towards an estimated USD 50 billion by 2030. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare only regulates devices as drugs through the CDSCO; the promotion of manufacturing rests with the Department of Pharmaceuticals. Hence option (c) is correct.

Statistical surveys of India The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) is conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the agency that carries out India's large-scale sample surveys and processes their data. PLFS was launched in April 2017 and replaced the old five-yearly employment-unemployment surveys; it now gives quarterly estimates as well as annual estimates for rural and urban India, and from 2025 a monthly bulletin as well. Its three key indicators are the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR), the Worker Population Ratio (WPR) and the Unemployment Rate (UR). The NSSO works within the National Statistical Office of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) — MoSPI is the parent ministry, not the surveying organisation — so option (a) is correct.

Fisheries schemes India's first organic fisheries cluster was launched in January 2025 in Soreng district of Sikkim by the Union Minister for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Rajiv Ranjan Singh. It has been set up under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), which promotes cluster-based development of the fisheries sector. Sikkim was the natural choice because it became India's first fully organic state in 2016, so its cold-water trout and carp farming is already free of antibiotics, chemicals and pesticides. NABARD funds the cluster's infrastructure, supports capacity building and promotes Fish Farmer Producer Organisations (FFPOs) so that the produce can reach eco-conscious global markets. Hence option (b) is correct.

Books and authors 'A Suitable Boy' (1993) was written by Vikram Seth; set in the newly independent India of 1951-52, it follows Mrs Rupa Mehra's search for a suitable husband for her daughter Lata. Running to about 1,350 pages, it is one of the longest novels ever published in a single English-language volume, and it was filmed for the BBC by Mira Nair in 2020. Hence option (b) is correct.

Books and authors 'Last Man in Tower' (2011) is Aravind Adiga's second novel; it is set in a Mumbai housing society where a builder's offer turns all the residents against Masterji, the one man who refuses to sell his flat. Adiga had won the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for his first novel 'The White Tiger'; his other works include 'Selection Day' and 'Amnesty'. Hence option (b) is correct.

Monuments and architects India Gate, the 42-metre high war memorial arch on Kartavya Path, was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens; its foundation stone was laid in 1921 and it was completed in 1931. It bears the names of about 13,300 Indian soldiers who fell in the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Lutyens planned New Delhi together with Herbert Baker: Lutyens designed the Viceroy's House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) and India Gate, while Baker designed the Secretariat blocks and the Council House, which makes option (a) the tempting wrong choice. Hence option (b) is correct.

Festivals of India Navroz, literally 'new day', marks the Persian or Iranian New Year and in India it is celebrated chiefly by the Parsi community. Parsis follow Zoroastrianism, which arose in ancient Persia and reached the western coast of India with migrants around the eighth century CE. Jamshed-i-Navroz falls on the spring equinox, about 21 March; Indian Parsis who follow the Shahenshahi calendar also keep Navroz in August, the day after Pateti. UNESCO has inscribed Nowruz on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Hence option (b) is correct.

Indian space programme GSLV Mk-III, ISRO's heaviest launch vehicle, has been officially renamed LVM3 — Launch Vehicle Mark-3 — because it is not used only for geosynchronous missions; the new name was used from the LVM3-M2 flight that placed 36 OneWeb satellites in low Earth orbit in October 2022. It is a three-stage vehicle with two S200 solid strap-on boosters, an L110 liquid core stage and the C25 cryogenic upper stage, and can carry about 4,000 kg to geosynchronous transfer orbit and 8,000 kg to low Earth orbit. LVM3 launched Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3 and has been chosen for the Gaganyaan human spaceflight missions. PSLN, ASLB and SLV-2 are not ISRO vehicles at all, so option (b) is correct.

Pressure and thrust Thrust is the force that acts perpendicular to a surface, and pressure is defined as the thrust acting on unit area. So the defining relation is $\mathrm{Pressure}=\frac{\mathrm{Thrust}}{\mathrm{Area}}$, that is $P=\frac{F}{A}$, whose SI unit is ${N/m}^2$, called the pascal. Options (c) and (d) subtract or add area and force, which is meaningless because the two are physically different quantities with different units. Since the area is constant, the definition gives $P\propto F$ — doubling the thrust doubles the pressure. Hence option (b) is correct.

Economic reforms of 1991 The financial-sector reforms after 1991 changed the Reserve Bank of India's role from a regulator that controlled the banks to one that facilitates them. As part of this liberalisation the ceiling on foreign investment in Indian banks — foreign direct investment and foreign institutional investment taken together — was raised in stages to about 74 per cent, subject to RBI conditions. Indian banks that fulfilled certain conditions were also allowed to open new branches without RBI permission, and foreign banks were permitted to set up offices in India. The purpose was to bring in capital, technology and competition, in keeping with the policy of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG). Hence option (c) is correct.

Maratha rule in Malwa Ujjain passed under Maratha control in the 1730s, when Ranoji Sindhia (Scindia) made it the headquarters of his Malwa territory, and the city expanded greatly under Sindhia patronage through the eighteenth century. The Sindhias rebuilt the Mahakaleshwar temple, restored the ghats on the Shipra and encouraged trade and learning; Sawai Jai Singh's observatory, the Vedh Shala or Jantar Mantar, also stands in the city. The Sindhias later shifted their capital to Gwalior. Among the other options, the Gaekwads ruled Baroda and the Pawars (Puars) Dhar and Dewas, while the Tomars were an earlier Rajput dynasty of Gwalior and not Marathas at all. Hence option (a) is correct.

Revolt of 1857 The Revolt of 1857 broke out at Meerut on 10 May 1857, when the sepoys of the 3rd Light Cavalry rose in revolt after 85 of their comrades had been court-martialled and jailed for refusing the greased cartridges. The mutineers released their imprisoned comrades, killed British officers and marched overnight to Delhi, where on 11 May they proclaimed Bahadur Shah Zafar the Emperor of Hindustan. Barrackpore is where Mangal Pandey made his lone protest on 29 March 1857 — an important prelude but not the general uprising; Kanpur under Nana Saheb and Jhansi under Rani Lakshmibai joined in June 1857. Hence option (b) is correct.

Money Bill Article 110 defines a Money Bill: a Bill is a Money Bill only if it deals solely with the matters listed in clause (1) — imposition or regulation of a tax, borrowing by the Government, custody of the Consolidated Fund or the Contingency Fund, appropriation of money out of the Consolidated Fund, and matters incidental to these. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha certifies whether a Bill is a Money Bill and that decision is final; such a Bill can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, on the President's recommendation. The Rajya Sabha can only make recommendations on a Money Bill and must return it within 14 days, and the Lok Sabha may accept or reject those recommendations — which is why a joint sitting under Article 108 never applies to a Money Bill. Hence option (b) is correct.

Classification of minerals Metallic minerals are divided into ferrous minerals, which supply iron or are used in making ferro-alloys with iron, and non-ferrous minerals, which do not. Iron ore is obviously ferrous, and manganese, chromite, nickel, cobalt and tungsten are placed in the same group because they are ferro-alloy minerals used to make different kinds of steel. Bauxite, the ore from which aluminium is obtained, contains no iron and is the standard textbook example of a non-ferrous metallic mineral; copper, lead, zinc and gold belong with it. India's reserves of non-ferrous minerals are limited but they are vital to the metallurgical, engineering and electrical industries, so option (c) is correct.

Operation Flood Operation Flood, the world's largest dairy development programme, was launched in 1970 by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) under the leadership of Dr Verghese Kurien, the 'Milkman of India'. It extended the Anand pattern of three-tier village milk cooperatives across the country and linked rural producers with urban consumers through a National Milk Grid. The programme ran in three phases up to 1996 and brought about the White Revolution, making India the world's largest producer of milk. Hence option (b) is correct.

National income accounting Factor cost is the sum of the payments made to the factors of production — rent to land, wages to labour, interest to capital and profit to the entrepreneur. It is therefore the producer's own cost of producing the good; it leaves out the indirect taxes charged on products and on production, while subsidies received are added in. The link with market price is $\mathrm{Market}\mathrm{price}=\mathrm{Factor}\mathrm{cost}+\mathrm{Indirect}\mathrm{taxes}-\mathrm{Subsidies}$, so national income (NNP at factor cost) is obtained by removing net indirect taxes from NNP at market price. Options (a), (c) and (d) all describe taxes, which are exactly what factor cost excludes, so option (b) is correct.

Plant tissues The complex permanent tissue that conducts materials in a plant is of two kinds — xylem and phloem. Xylem is made of tracheids, vessels, xylem parenchyma and xylem fibres; the vessels are long tubes formed of dead cells placed end to end whose cross walls have dissolved, and they carry water and dissolved minerals upward from the root. Phloem consists of sieve tubes, companion cells, phloem parenchyma and phloem fibres and carries the food prepared in the leaves to the rest of the plant, so it has no vessels. Only statement II is therefore correct, and option (a) is correct.

Plant movements A tendril is a slender, thread-like structure of a climbing plant that is sensitive to touch; a directional growth movement in response to touch is called thigmotropism. When the tendril meets a support, the growth hormone auxin moves away from the side that is touching it, so the free side grows faster than the side in contact. This unequal growth on the two sides makes the tendril bend and wind round the support, gripping it firmly. The weak stem is thus held up and carried towards sunlight, which is the whole purpose of the response. Hence option (b) is correct.

Sanskrit literature Banabhatta was the court poet of Emperor Harshavardhana of Kannauj in the seventh century CE and the greatest master of ornate Sanskrit prose. He wrote 'Kadambari', a romance in prose that is counted among the earliest novels in world literature and was completed by his son Bhushanabhatta, and 'Harshacharita', a prose biography of his royal patron. 'Raghuvamsha' and 'Ritusamhara' are poems by Kalidasa, while 'Dhatupatha' is Panini's list of Sanskrit verbal roots, so option (c) is correct.