13 February 2025 · Shift 1

Article 74 of the Constitution Article 74 provides for a Council of Ministers, with the Prime Minister at its head, to aid and advise the President; the President shall act in accordance with that advice. The 42nd Amendment made the advice binding and the 44th Amendment allowed the President to send it back once for reconsideration - after which it must be accepted. The other three appointments sit elsewhere: the Chief Justice under Article 124(2), the Vice-President's election under Article 66, and the Finance Commission and its Chairman under Article 280. Hence the correct option is (c).

ISSF World Championship 2023 India won 14 medals in all at the ISSF World Championship 2023, held at Baku in Azerbaijan. The championship is the International Shooting Sport Federation's rifle, pistol and shotgun world meet, and it also carried Olympic quota places for Paris 2024. That tally of 14 placed India third in the overall medal table of the championship. Hence the correct option is (c).

Government of India Act, 1935 The Government of India Act, 1935 was the longest Act ever passed by the British Parliament for India: 321 sections and 10 schedules. It abolished dyarchy in the provinces and gave them provincial autonomy, introduced dyarchy at the Centre, and proposed an All-India Federation that never came into being. It also set up the Federal Court (1937) and provided for the Reserve Bank of India, and extended the vote to about 10% of the population. Much of our present Constitution - the federal scheme, the office of Governor, the emergency provisions - is drawn from this Act. Hence the correct option is (d).

Classification of industries A genetic industry is one that reproduces and multiplies plants and animals for sale - plant nurseries, seed farms, poultry hatcheries, cattle and fish breeding. The other three never multiply living stock: extractive industry only removes what nature has already made, manufacturing converts raw material into goods, and service industry sells services. Hence the correct option is (b).

Annulment of Bengal Partition Lord Curzon's Partition of Bengal took effect on 16 October 1905 and was annulled in 1911. Viceroy Lord Hardinge announced the reversal at the Delhi Durbar of December 1911, in the same breath as the shift of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The annulment was forced by the Swadeshi and Boycott movement that the partition itself had set off, so no later date fits - 1907 is the year of the Surat Split and 1919 and 1920 belong to the Rowlatt and Non-Cooperation years. Hence the correct option is (c).

Behavioural adaptation Adaptation is the taking on of new characters that let an organism survive in changed surroundings; when the change shows in what the organism does rather than in its body chemistry, it is called behavioural adaptation. Familiar examples are birds shifting their migration routes, desert animals turning nocturnal, and bears hibernating before winter. The other options name different processes: isolation only separates populations, mimicry is resembling another species for protection, and speciation is the formation of a new species - none of them is the act of acquiring new characters to fit the environment. Hence the correct option is (d).

Budget deficit A budget deficit means the government's expenditure exceeds its revenue in a year, so the gap has to be financed from somewhere. That financing comes mainly from borrowing - market loans, small savings and borrowing from abroad - so a deficit tends to raise public debt and the interest burden. Option (a) is the definition of a surplus, not a deficit; (c) is backwards, because the deficit arises from spending being the higher side; and (d) overstates the case - deficit spending may or may not raise growth, and never immediately. Hence the correct option is (b).

Classical dance: Kathak Kathak is the principal classical dance of North India, at home in Uttar Pradesh and carried by the Lucknow, Jaipur and Banaras gharanas. Its marks are fast footwork (tatkar) on rows of ghungroos, rapid spins (chakkars) and storytelling through abhinaya; Birju Maharaj and Sitara Devi are among its great exponents. Each of the other three belongs to another region: Sattriya to Assam, Kuchipudi to Andhra Pradesh and Kathakali to Kerala. Hence the correct option is (b).

Bills of Lading Bill, 2024 The Bills of Lading Bill, 2024 was introduced in the Lok Sabha in August 2024 by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways. It replaces the colonial Indian Bills of Lading Act, 1856 with a short modern law in simple language. A bill of lading is issued by a carrier to a shipper and does three jobs at once: it is a receipt for the goods, evidence of the contract of carriage, and a document of title that transfers rights to the consignee. Because a bill of lading is a shipping document, the subject belongs to the shipping ministry and not to Commerce, Railways or Law and Justice. Hence the correct option is (d).

Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar The Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar was instituted by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 2006 for outstanding performing artists below the age of 40. The Sangeet Natak Akademi is the national academy for the PERFORMING arts only, so literature falls outside its charge - writing is honoured by the Sahitya Akademi and the visual arts by the Lalit Kala Akademi. Hence the correct option is (d).

Dhanu Yatra of Odisha Dhanu Yatra is the open-air theatre festival of Bargarh in Odisha, held for about eleven days around Pausha Purnima, and it enacts Krishna Leela. The story staged is Krishna's birth and his killing of his uncle, the tyrant Kansa; Bargarh town itself plays Mathura, the village of Ambapali plays Gopapur and the river Jira stands in for the Yamuna. Because the stage spreads over roughly 5 km of real town and countryside, it is called the largest open-air theatre in the world; it began in 1947-48. Ram Leela is the Ramayana enactment of the north and Dussehra is the day it ends on, so neither is the base of Dhanu Yatra. Hence the correct option is (a).

Carnatic music: Bombay Jayashri The Carnatic vocalist Jayashri Ramnath is known everywhere as Bombay Jayashri; audiences in Tamil Nadu attached the prefix 'Bombay' because she grew up and trained in Mumbai. In Carnatic music such a place-prefix is a common mark of identity - Bombay Jayashri, Madurai Mani Iyer, Bombay Sisters. She received the Padma Shri in 2021 and the Sangita Kalanidhi in 2023, and her 'Pi's Lullaby' from the film Life of Pi earned an Academy Award nomination. Hence the correct option is (a).

Union Council of Ministers As of September 2024 the Cabinet Minister for Commerce and Industry is Piyush Goyal, who has held the portfolio since 2019 and kept it in the Council of Ministers formed in June 2024. The Ministry works through two departments - the Department of Commerce and the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT); it was re-formed on 13 October 1999 by merging the separate Commerce and Industry ministries. The other three hold different portfolios: H. D. Kumaraswamy Heavy Industries and Steel, Nitin Gadkari Road Transport and Highways, and Amit Shah Home Affairs and Cooperation. Hence the correct option is (b).

Geological time Geological time is the enormous time scale on which the Earth's own processes work - mountain building, sea-floor spreading, the laying down of rock - measured in millions and hundreds of millions of years. It is read off the rock record: the geological time scale divides that record into eons, eras, periods and epochs, dated by chronostratigraphy (which layer sits on which) and geochronology (the physical age of the rock). This is exactly what separates option (a) from the rest - (b) and (c) speak of short-term and rapid changes, and (d) is about the atmosphere, which belongs to climate study, not to the rock record. Hence the correct option is (a).

Vedas and their Brahmanas Brahmanas are the prose texts attached to a Veda that explain how its hymns are used in ritual. The Gopatha Brahmana is the one and only Brahmana of the Atharvaveda. It is linked to both recensions of the Atharvaveda, the Shaunaka and the Paippalada, which is why no other Veda can claim it. Hence the correct option is (c).

Child sex ratio, Census 2011 Child sex ratio counts girls per 1,000 boys in the 0-6 age group; for the whole country in Census 2011 it was 919. Among the states Haryana was the lowest at 834, while the other three options all stand above the national figure. The overall sex ratio in 2011 was 943 for India, highest in Kerala at 1084 - Haryana is low on both counts. Hence the correct option is (c).

Immigration, Census 2001 Census 2001 classified immigrants by their country of last residence. Afghanistan accounted for only 0.2% of the immigrants who came to India. That is the smallest share among the neighbouring countries listed, because the flow into India is dominated by Bangladesh (about 30.8 lakh people), Pakistan (about 9.97 lakh) and Nepal (about 5.97 lakh). Read the figure as a share of immigrants, not of India's population - as a share of the population it would be far smaller still. Hence the correct option is (d).

Genetic industry A genetic industry breeds and multiplies living things for sale, selecting for wanted traits. Poultry farming hatches and rears birds bred for egg yield or meat, so it is a genetic industry. The test is whether the industry MULTIPLIES life: mining only removes a mineral nature already made, cement manufacturing converts limestone into a new product, and dam building is construction. Hence the correct option is (b).

Dronacharya Award The Dronacharya Award, India's highest honour for a sports coach, was instituted in 1985. The first three awards, given that same year, went to Bhalchandra Bhaskar Bhagwat (wrestling), Om Prakash Bhardwaj (boxing) and O. M. Nambiar (athletics). It is named after Dronacharya, the teacher of the Kauravas and the Pandavas, and is conferred with the National Sports Awards alongside the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna (1991-92) and the Arjuna Award (1961). Hence the correct option is (d).

Concentration of a solution Let the solute have mass m and volume v, and let the solution have volume V. Mass by volume percentage $=\frac{m}{V}\times 100$ Volume by volume percentage $=\frac{v}{V}\times 100$ Ratio $=\frac{\frac{m}{V}\times 100}{\frac{v}{V}\times 100}=\frac{m}{V}\times \frac{V}{v}=\frac{m}{v}$ V cancels, and what is left is the mass of the solute divided by the volume of the solute - that is, the density of the solute. Hence the correct option is (d).