27 November 2025 · Shift 1

Delhi Sultanate administration Both the Sultans named kept a huge standing army in Delhi, because the Mongols raided the Sultanate's north-western frontier again and again. Alauddin Khalji (1296-1316) paid his soldiers in cash; to make those cash salaries workable he fixed the prices of grain, cloth, horses and slaves in the Delhi markets and enforced them through the shahna-i-mandi. He also introduced the dagh (branding of army horses) and the chehra (a descriptive roll of every soldier) to stop cheating at muster - measures that show how heavy the administrative load of that army was. Muhammad bin Tughluq (1325-1351) likewise kept a very large army in Delhi for the defence of the frontier and for his ambitious projects, and financed it through heavy taxation in the Doab and the token currency, both of which ended in disorder. So both statements are correct and option (d) is the correct answer.

Bhakti movement, Alvars The Alvars were Tamil poet-saints devoted to Vishnu, active roughly between the 6th and the 9th centuries CE. Their hymns were collected by Nathamuni into the Nalayira Divya Prabandham, literally the 'divine collection of 4,000 verses'. It became the scriptural base of Sri Vaishnavism and is still chanted in Vishnu temples, which is why it is often called the 'Tamil Veda'. The parallel Shaiva saints, the Nayanars, have their hymns in the Tevaram - a useful pair to remember together. Silappadikaram and Manimekalai are the twin Tamil epics and Tirukkural is Tiruvalluvar's work on ethics, so option (b) is the correct answer.

Fundamental Duties The Fundamental Duties are listed in Article 51A, which forms Part IV-A of the Constitution. Article 51A(g) makes it the duty of every citizen 'to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife, and to have compassion for living creatures'. Paying taxes and casting a vote are legal or civic obligations, but neither is written into Article 51A. Education appears only in Article 51A(k), which asks a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to a child between 6 and 14 years - not up to 18 years. Fundamental Duties were added by the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee, and the idea was borrowed from the Constitution of the erstwhile USSR. So option (d) is the correct answer.

Statehood of Sikkim The 36th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1975 made Sikkim a full-fledged State - the 22nd State of the Indian Union. It ended the associate-state arrangement and inserted Article 371F, which still carries the special provisions for Sikkim's administration. The earlier 35th Amendment Act, 1974 had given Sikkim only the status of an 'Associate State', a category created for it and abolished a year later. The 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 is the well-known 'Mini Constitution' amendment and has nothing to do with Sikkim. So option (d) is the correct answer.

SAARC membership SAARC was founded on 8 December 1985 at Dhaka, and its Secretariat is at Kathmandu in Nepal. It has eight member states: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Afghanistan was the last to join, admitted as the 8th member at the 13th SAARC Summit in Dhaka in 2005. Iran holds only observer status, along with China, Japan, the USA, the European Union, the Republic of Korea, Australia, Mauritius and Myanmar. So Iran is not a member and option (b) is the correct answer.

Indian athletics legends Praveen Kumar Sobti was a discus thrower, and every one of his Asian Games medals came in the discus throw — gold at Bangkok in 1966 and again at Bangkok in 1970, and silver at Tehran in 1974. The hammer throw appears in his record only once, as a Commonwealth Games silver in 1966, so option (d) is the trap that the question is built around. He represented India at the 1968 Mexico City and 1972 Munich Olympics and received the Arjuna Award in 1967. A later generation knew him as Bheem in the television serial 'Mahabharat'. Hence option (c) is correct.

Appointments 2025 In June 2025 Sailesh C. Mehta was elected Chairman of the Fertiliser Association of India (FAI) — that is, the apex association of the country's fertiliser industry. Mehta is Chairman and Managing Director of Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd, with about four decades in the fertiliser and petrochemical business. He succeeded N. Suresh Krishnan, MD and CEO of Paradeep Phosphates Ltd. FAI, founded in 1955 and based in New Delhi, is an industry body — not a regulator, a research council or a think tank — which rules out the other three options. Hence option (c) is correct.

Parliamentary committees Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal, Lok Sabha MP from Paschim Champaran (Bihar), was named Chairperson of the Committee on Estimates for the 2025-26 term, which runs up to 30 April 2026. The Estimates Committee is the largest of the three financial committees — 30 members, all elected by the Lok Sabha alone, with no Rajya Sabha representation; the Speaker appoints the chairperson for a one-year term. It examines the estimates in the budget, suggests economies and reports whether money is being spent within the policy implied by the estimates, which is why it is called a 'continuous economy committee'. Om Birla is the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and therefore appoints such chairpersons rather than serving as one. The first Estimates Committee of independent India was set up in 1950 on the recommendation of the then Finance Minister John Mathai. Hence option (b) is correct.

TB incidence in India India's TB incidence in 2023 was 195 cases per 1,00,000 population, down from 237 per 1,00,000 in 2015. That is a fall of $\frac{237-195}{237}\times 100\approx 17.7\%$ in eight years, against a global decline of about $8\%$ over the same period. TB deaths fell in step, from 28 to 22 per lakh population, a drop of about $21.4\%$. The gains are credited to the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP), run under the National Health Mission, with nutrition support through the Ni-kshay Poshan Yojana. Hence option (b) is correct.

Union Budget 2025-26 The Union Budget for FY 2025-26 announced a new scheme for 5 lakh first-time entrepreneurs — women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes — offering term loans of up to ₹2 crore each over the next five years. The aim is to open bank credit to groups that usually cannot offer collateral, and the loans are paired with online capacity-building in entrepreneurship and managerial skills. The budget was presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 1 February 2025. Hence option (d) is correct.

Reports and publishers The World Poverty Clock is produced by World Data Lab, a data-analytics social enterprise, and was launched in 2017. It gives a real-time, country-by-country estimate of how many people are living in extreme poverty, measured against the International Poverty Line of about USD 2.15 a day. Its purpose is to let governments track progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 1 — ending extreme poverty by 2030. Hence option (a) is correct.

Asian Games history The first Asian Games were held in New Delhi in 1951, and the swimmer Sachin Nag won the men's 100 m freestyle — India's very first Asian Games gold medal. India finished second on that medal table with 15 golds, behind Japan. The other names do not fit: K. D. Jadhav won India's first individual Olympic medal (wrestling bronze, Helsinki 1952), Milkha Singh's Asian Games golds began only in 1958, and Neeraj Chopra belongs to a much later era. Hence option (b) is correct.

Yoga practices Surya Namaskar, or Sun Salutation, is a linked sequence of twelve yoga postures performed as one flowing cycle, each movement coordinated with inhalation or exhalation. It therefore belongs to the discipline of yoga, and it forms a standard component of the Common Yoga Protocol demonstrated on International Day of Yoga, observed every 21 June. Because it moves the spine through forward and backward bends in turn, it is often described as a complete body exercise. Hence option (a) is correct.

Aravalli Green Wall Project The Aravalli Green Wall Project, launched in 2023, plans a green belt about 5 km wide running along roughly 1,400 km of the Aravalli range. The range itself passes through only four States and Union Territories — Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi — and the project therefore covers exactly these. Jharkhand lies in the Chhotanagpur plateau, far to the east, and has no part in the project. So statement I is true and statement II is false; the scheme is modelled on Africa's Great Green Wall and targets desertification and land degradation. Hence option (b) is correct.

Sports events hosting In July 2025 the Executive Committee of the International Shooting Sport Federation, meeting at Lonato del Garda in Italy, awarded the 2027 ISSF World Cup to New Delhi, India. The same decision gave New Delhi the ISSF Junior World Championships of 2028, both to be staged at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting Range. India has hosted ISSF events repeatedly in recent years, and this confirms its standing as a regular venue for world-level shooting. Hence option (a) is correct.

Books and authors 'Development as Freedom' (1999) was written by Amartya Sen, who had received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998 for his work on welfare economics. Its central argument is that development means expanding people's real freedoms — political liberty, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective security — rather than merely raising income. His other well-known works include 'Poverty and Famines', 'Inequality Reexamined' and 'The Idea of Justice'. Hence option (c) is correct.

Festivals of India Losar is the Tibetan New Year. It is celebrated in Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and the Lahaul-Spiti belt of Himachal Pradesh — Tibetan-Buddhist areas — and not in Rajasthan. The other three are firmly part of Rajasthan's calendar: Teej, the monsoon festival for Goddess Parvati, celebrated with great show in Jaipur; Gangaur, an eighteen-day festival honouring Gauri that closes in Chaitra; and Makar Sankranti, kept in Jaipur as a famous kite-flying day. The question asks for the odd one out, so the Tibetan festival is the answer. Hence option (c) is correct.

Mauryan art and architecture The Great Stupa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh was begun by Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE and enlarged in the Shunga period with a stone casing, a circumambulatory path and a harmika crowned by a chhatra. Its fame rests on the four carved toranas — gateways placed at the cardinal points — added between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE under Satavahana-era patronage. The torana panels narrate Jataka tales and events of the Buddha's life, but always through symbols such as the wheel, the bodhi tree and the footprints rather than a human figure. The other options carry no gateways: Barabar has polished rock-cut caves, Dhauli carries Ashokan rock edicts, and the Sarnath pillar is known for its lion capital. Sanchi was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1989. Hence option (a) is correct.

Genome-edited rice The work was led by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which produced India's first two genome-edited rice varieties. DRR Dhan 100 (Kamala) came from ICAR-Indian Institute of Rice Research, Hyderabad, and Pusa DST Rice 1 from ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Both were made by CRISPR-Cas based site-directed nuclease editing of the plant's own genes; since no foreign DNA is inserted, they are not regulated as GM crops. They are expected to raise yield, improve drought and salinity tolerance and save irrigation water. ICAR was set up in 1929, is headquartered in New Delhi and functions under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education; CRRI (now NRRI, Cuttack) and NBPGR are themselves ICAR institutes, while ICMR deals with medical research. Hence option (a) is correct.

DRDO missile systems VSHORADS stands for Very Short Range Air Defence System — the name itself gives the role away. It is a man-portable missile developed by DRDO's Research Centre Imarat with Indian industry partners, and its task is close-in battlefield air defence: bringing down low-flying aircraft, helicopters and drones over the troops it is protecting. It uses a dual-thrust solid propellant motor and an imaging infra-red seeker, and is fired from a shoulder-launched canister, so a small team can move with the front line and shoot within seconds. Flight trials off the Odisha coast in October 2024 met all mission objectives. Surveillance, propulsion control and strategic missile command are entirely different functions, so the other options do not apply. Hence option (b) is correct.

Tipu Sultan and the French Tipu Sultan of Mysore built the closest French connection of any Indian ruler, hoping to use it against the English East India Company; he sent embassies to France and Turkey and planted a 'Tree of Liberty' at Srirangapatna, even joining the Jacobin Club there. French officers drilled his infantry in the European manner, and his arsenal produced the iron-cased Mysorean rockets that the British later studied and copied as the Congreve rocket. Ranjit Singh did modernise the Khalsa army with European officers, but they were hired mercenaries and he kept no diplomatic alliance with France; Balaji Vishwanath and Asaf Jah I belong to an earlier period with no such reorganisation. Hence option (a) is correct.

Articles of the Constitution Article 63 states in one line: 'There shall be a Vice-President of India.' It is the provision that creates the office itself, which is exactly what the question asks for. The articles that follow fill in the detail — Article 64 makes him ex officio Chairman of the Council of States, Article 65 lets him discharge the President's functions when that office falls vacant, and Article 66 lays down the electoral college and the manner of election. Note the parallel wording of Article 52 for the President; it is the reason option (d) tempts, but it declares the wrong office. Hence option (a) is correct.

Five-Year Plans The Eighth Five-Year Plan ran from 1992 to 1997, and P. V. Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister from June 1991 to May 1996 — that is, for almost the whole of it. The plan itself was delayed by two years by political instability and the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis, so it became the first plan of the liberalised economy, stressing human resource development, employment generation and a smaller direct role for the State. The other names do not fit the window: V. P. Singh left office in 1990, H. D. Deve Gowda became Prime Minister only in June 1996, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee's full term began in 1998. Hence option (a) is correct.

Digestive enzymes Enzymes are the biological catalysts of the alimentary canal: they speed up the hydrolysis of large food molecules into absorbable ones without being consumed themselves. Salivary amylase starts on starch in the mouth, pepsin (activated by hydrochloric acid) attacks protein in the stomach, and the pancreas supplies trypsin, pancreatic amylase and lipase to the small intestine. The other options do different work: hormones are chemical messengers, antibodies are defence proteins, and vitamins are micronutrients that at most serve as coenzymes. Hence option (a) is correct.

Ancient Indian languages Besides Sanskrit, the two languages that carried religious and philosophical thought in ancient India were Pali and Prakrit. The Buddhist canon, the Tipitaka, was composed in Pali, and the Jain Agamas in Ardhamagadhi Prakrit; both stood close to everyday speech, so the teaching could reach ordinary people rather than only the learned. Ashoka's edicts too are written mostly in Prakrit, using the Brahmi script. The other pairs are out of place: Greek and Latin, and Persian and Arabic, entered India far later, while Tamil and Telugu belong to the Dravidian family of the south and to a separate literary tradition. Hence option (a) is correct.