27 November 2025 · Shift 3

Mughal court historian Abul Fazl, one of the nine gems (Navaratnas) of Akbar's court, wrote the Akbarnama, the official history of Akbar's reign in three volumes. Volume I covers the Timurid ancestry and Akbar's birth, Volume II the events of the reign up to 1602, and Volume III, the Ain-i-Akbari, describes the administration, revenue, army and geography of the empire. It was written in Persian, the court language of the Mughals; Abul Fazl was killed in 1602 by Bir Singh Bundela. Al-Biruni wrote the Kitab-ul-Hind, Ziauddin Barani the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi and Minhaj-us-Siraj the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, so option (a) is correct.

Early medieval dynasties The Rashtrakutas rose in the Deccan under Dantidurga and ruled from Manyakheta, modern Malkhed in Karnataka, so pair I is correct. The Gurjara-Pratiharas began in western India around Bhinmal and Mandore in Rajasthan before taking Kannauj as their capital, so pair II is also correct. The Rashtrakuta king Krishna I built the monolithic Kailasa temple at Ellora, and Amoghavarsha I wrote the Kavirajamarga in Kannada. Both pairs are correctly matched, so option (c) is correct.

Directive Principles Article 40 is a Directive Principle: the State shall organise village panchayats and give them the powers needed to work as units of self-government. The directive took statutory shape only with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, which added Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule with its 29 subjects. Rajasthan (Nagaur) was the first state to launch Panchayati Raj, on 2 October 1959, on the recommendation of the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee. The uniform civil code is Article 44 and promotion of international peace is Article 51, while the right to information rests on the RTI Act, 2005, so option (a) is correct.

Sixth Schedule states The Sixth Schedule provides for the administration of tribal areas in four north-eastern states — Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Of the four options only Mizoram belongs to that list. It works through Autonomous District and Regional Councils that make laws on land, forests, water, agriculture, inheritance and social custom, under Articles 244(2) and 275(1). Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur are outside the Sixth Schedule, so option (c) is correct.

Indian Ocean Rim Association Membership of IORA is open only to sovereign states that have a coastline on the Indian Ocean. China has no Indian Ocean coastline, so it cannot be a member; it holds the status of a Dialogue Partner, which it has had since 2000. IORA was set up on 7 March 1997, the idea having grown out of Nelson Mandela's visit to India in 1995, and its secretariat is in Mauritius. Australia, Bangladesh and India are all member states of the grouping, so the country asked for is option (c).

Gupta rulers The title "Napoleon of India" belongs to Samudragupta, the second ruler of the Gupta dynasty. It was given by the historian Vincent A. Smith in his Early History of India, because Samudragupta's campaigns swept across northern and southern India without a single recorded defeat. His conquests are recorded in the Allahabad Pillar Inscription (Prayag Prashasti), composed in Sanskrit by his court poet Harisena. Harsha ruled the Pushyabhuti dynasty and Pulakeshin II was the greatest Chalukya of Badami, while Rajendra Chola I is called the "Napoleon of South India", so option (b) is correct.

Appointments in news Nidhi Tewari, a 2014-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, was appointed Private Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2025. She was already working in the Prime Minister's Office as Deputy Secretary, handling foreign affairs and security files, so the appointment was a promotion from within the PMO. The order was cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) and notified by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT). Ajit Doval is the National Security Adviser, P. K. Mishra is the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and Rajiv Gauba is a former Cabinet Secretary, so option (c) is correct.

Chief Ministers Mohan Charan Majhi took oath as the Chief Minister of Odisha on 12 June 2024. A four-time MLA from Keonjhar, he is the first Chief Minister of Odisha from the BJP and the third tribal Chief Minister of the state, after Hemananda Biswal and Giridhar Gamang. His swearing-in ended the 24-year tenure of Naveen Patnaik of the BJD. Hemant Soren is associated with Jharkhand, Himanta Biswa Sarma with Assam and Manik Saha with Tripura, so option (b) is correct.

UGC anti-ragging directive In July 2025 the University Grants Commission (UGC) directed all higher education institutions to keep a check on informal WhatsApp and other social-media groups used by seniors to harass juniors. The UGC ruled that such online intimidation is itself to be treated as ragging under the UGC (Curbing the Menace of Ragging in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2009, and must be acted on by the institution's anti-ragging committee. The UGC is the statutory body created by the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, to coordinate and maintain standards in universities and colleges. NITI Aayog is a policy think tank and CBSE looks after school education, so option (a) is correct.

Vibrant Villages Programme The Union Cabinet approved the Vibrant Villages Programme-II in April 2025 as a $100\%$ centrally funded central sector scheme, so the states bear no share of the cost. It covers strategically placed villages along India's international land borders other than the northern border, which was already taken up in Phase I. The outlay is ₹6,839 crore for 2024-25 to 2028-29, spent on all-weather road connectivity, tourism, livelihoods and infrastructure so that border villages do not empty out. VVP-I, launched in 2023 with ₹4,800 crore, covered Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand and Ladakh, so option (d) is correct.

International reports The Technology and Innovation Report is brought out by UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. UNCTAD was set up in 1964, is headquartered at Geneva and is the UN body that deals with trade, investment and development. The 2025 edition, titled "Inclusive Artificial Intelligence for Development", placed India 10th in the world in private investment in Artificial Intelligence. UNESCO brings out the Global Education Monitoring Report and the IMF the World Economic Outlook, so option (a) is correct.

India at the Olympics India made its first Olympic appearance at the Paris Games of 1900, and a single athlete, Norman Pritchard, represented the country. Pritchard, an Anglo-Indian sprinter, took part in five athletics events and won two silver medals, in the 200 m sprint and the 200 m hurdles. Those two medals made India the first Asian nation to win an Olympic medal. India sent its first proper contingent only to the Antwerp Games of 1920, so option (a) is correct.

Sports in ancient India Both archery and wrestling are described in the Ramayana as well as the Mahabharata. Archery (Dhanurvidya) runs through both epics — Rama breaking Shiva's bow at Sita's swayamvara, and Arjuna piercing the eye of the revolving fish to win Draupadi. Wrestling (Malla-yuddha) appears just as often — the duel of Vali and Sugriva in the Ramayana and of Bhima and Jarasandha in the Mahabharata. Since both sports are mentioned, option (c) is correct.

International Solar Alliance The International Solar Alliance has set the target of mobilising one trillion US dollars of investment in solar energy by 2030. This is its "Towards 1000" strategy — USD 1,000 billion of investment, energy access for 1,000 million people and 1,000 GW of solar capacity installed by 2030. The ISA was launched jointly by India and France at COP21 in Paris in 2015 and is the first international intergovernmental organisation with its headquarters in India, at Gurugram, Haryana. Hence the target is 1 trillion dollars and option (a) is correct.

Basketball in India The first National Basketball Championship in India was organised in 1934, at New Delhi. The game had come to India through the YMCA, and the championship began even before a national federation existed to run it. The Basketball Federation of India (BFI), which governs the sport today, was formed in 1950, while India had joined FIBA in 1936. So the correct year is 1934 and option (b) is correct.

Books and authors Whereabouts (2021) is a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri; she wrote it first in Italian as Dove mi trovo and then translated it into English herself. Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 for her debut short-story collection Interpreter of Maladies, and her other well-known works are The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowland. The other three titles belong to different writers, so option (a) is correct.

Harappan town planning Statement I is correct. The Harappan drainage system was the most advanced of the ancient world — covered brick drains ran along the streets, with manholes at intervals for cleaning and house drains feeding into them. Statement II is wrong. The drains served the whole city: every house, large or small, was connected to the street drain, which is why the system is read as evidence of civic planning and not of royal privilege. Grid-pattern streets, burnt-brick houses and this underground drainage together define Harappan town planning. Only statement I holds, so option (a) is correct.

Festivals of India Jiviti Puja (Jivti Puja) is kept by married women in Maharashtra, and in the neighbouring parts of Gujarat. It falls on the Fridays of the month of Shravan (July-August), when women worship Goddess Jivti, regarded as a form of Parvati, for the long life and well-being of their children. A paper image of Jivti is pasted on the wall and offered turmeric, kumkum and sweet dishes. A similar but separate vrat, Jitiya or Jivitputrika, is observed in Jharkhand and Bihar in the month of Ashwin, so option (c) is correct.

Satellites in news Israel placed its communication satellite Dror-1 in orbit in July 2025. Dror-1 was designed and built by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is Israel's most advanced home-built communication satellite, a fully digital "smart" satellite meant to serve the country's national communication needs for about 15 years. Hence option (b) is correct.

India-France space mission TRISHNA is a joint earth-observation mission of India and France, taken forward by ISRO and the French space agency CNES in June 2024. TRISHNA stands for Thermal infraRed Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural resource Assessment. It will measure land surface temperature and emissivity at high resolution, which allows crop water stress, water use and urban heat islands to be tracked. The satellite is to be launched on India's PSLV from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, so option (b) is correct.

Third Anglo-Mysore War The war that ended in 1792 was the Third Anglo-Mysore War, and Tipu Sultan faced a triple alliance, not a single enemy. The English East India Company under Lord Cornwallis joined hands with the Marathas and with the Nizam of Hyderabad, so all three of I, II and III took part. The allies besieged Srirangapatnam and forced the Treaty of Seringapatam (1792), by which Tipu surrendered nearly half his territory, paid an indemnity of about three crore rupees and gave two of his sons as hostages. Hence option (d) is correct.

Article 169 Under Article 169 of the Constitution, the move to create or abolish a Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad) must begin in the State Legislative Assembly. The Assembly has to pass a resolution by a special majority — a majority of its total membership and at least two-thirds of the members present and voting. Parliament then passes the law by a simple majority, and such a law is not treated as a constitutional amendment under Article 368. The Governor and the Prime Minister have no power of recommendation here, so option (d) is correct.

Land reforms in India Abolition of intermediaries — zamindars, jagirdars and inamdars — was the first land reform taken up after independence. Under those systems the intermediary collected rent from the actual cultivator and passed a fixed sum on to the state, so the tiller had no security of tenure and no link with the government. Removing the middleman placed the tenant in direct contact with the state: he now paid land revenue to the government and was recognised as the owner of the land he tilled. The First Constitutional Amendment of 1951 added the Ninth Schedule to shield these laws from being struck down in court. The aim was therefore a direct tenant-state relationship, so option (c) is correct.

Transport in plants The movement of the soluble products of photosynthesis from the leaves to the other parts of a plant is called translocation. It takes place through the phloem, which carries mainly sucrose from the source (the leaf) to the sink (root, fruit or growing bud). Sugar is loaded into the sieve tubes using energy from ATP; water then enters by osmosis and the pressure built up drives the sap, so phloem transport can run both upward and downward. Respiration releases energy from food and evaporation is only loss of water, so option (b) is correct.

Jain literature The Tattvarthadhigamasutra, usually called the Tattvarthasutra, was composed by Acharya Umasvati around the 2nd-3rd century CE. It is the first Jain work written in Sanskrit rather than Prakrit, and the only text accepted as authoritative by both the Digambara and the Shvetambara sects. In ten chapters of terse sutras it sums up the whole of Jain philosophy; its opening aphorism states the Triratna — right faith, right knowledge and right conduct together form the path to liberation. Kundakunda wrote the Prakrit works Samayasara and Pravachanasara, Aryabhata was a mathematician-astronomer and Kalidasa a Sanskrit poet, so option (b) is correct.