21 February 2025 · Shift 2

Hindustani gharanas Shruti Sadolikar Katkar sings khayal in the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana - the style she learnt at home from her father Wamanrao Sadolikar, a disciple of the gharana's own founding line. The gharana was founded by Ustad Alladiya Khan in the late 19th century and is known for rare ragas and long, unbroken melodic phrases. The other three gharanas are identified by other voices - Bade Ghulam Ali Khan (Patiala), Ustad Rashid Khan (Rampur-Sahaswan) and Pandit Jasraj (Mewati) - none of them Sadolikar's line. One fact that fixes her place: she received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Hindustani vocal music in 2011 and headed the Bhatkhande Music Institute, Lucknow. Hence the correct option is (d).

Last Mauryan ruler Brihadratha was the last Mauryan emperor. In about 185 BCE his own commander-in-chief, Pushyamitra Shunga, killed him while he was reviewing the army, and then took the throne himself. That single act ends one dynasty and starts another - Mauryan rule of roughly 137 years closes and the Shunga dynasty begins with Pushyamitra at Pataliputra. Bindusara was the second Mauryan ruler and Ashoka's father, so he cannot be the last; Dasharatha and Samprati were later successors but both ruled before Brihadratha. Hence the correct option is (c).

Khelo India Youth Games 2024 Maharashtra topped the medal tally of the 2024 Khelo India Youth Games with 57 gold, 48 silver and 53 bronze - 158 medals in all. The sixth edition ran from 19 to 31 January 2024 in Tamil Nadu, spread over four host cities: Chennai, Madurai, Tiruchirappalli and Coimbatore. The pattern is worth remembering: Maharashtra's depth in athletics, swimming, wrestling and kho-kho has kept it champion in successive editions, and only the host State Haryana has broken that run. Hence the correct option is (b).

Sub-junior badminton, Bihar The 2023 Yonex-Sunrise All India Sub-Junior Ranking Badminton Tournament was hosted at Gaya in Bihar, from 27 June to 2 July 2023. It is one of the national ranking legs of the Badminton Association of India for under-15 and under-17 players, and the Bihar Badminton Association conducted this leg - a rare national-level badminton event for the State. Patna and Rajgir are the tempting answers because Patna is the State capital and Rajgir has Bihar's new sports university and stadium complex, but the 2023 sub-junior leg was awarded to Gaya. Hence the correct option is (d).

Fundamental Duties The Fundamental Duties sit in Part IV-A of the Constitution, in a single article - Article 51-A. They were inserted 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. Ten duties came in 1976; the 86th Amendment Act, 2002 added the eleventh - the duty of a parent to give education to a child between six and fourteen years. Part IV is the trap: it holds the Directive Principles, and the duties were placed in a new part inserted just after it, which is exactly why it is numbered IV-A. Hence the correct option is (a).

Seventh Five-Year Plan The Seventh Five-Year Plan (1985-90) was launched with the slogan "Food, Work and Productivity". Read the three words as its three targets: raise foodgrain output, create productive employment, and lift productivity through modern technology - growth carrying social justice with it. It aimed at about $5\%$ annual growth and in fact recorded close to $6\%$, with per capita income rising by about $3.7\%$ a year. The neighbours had other themes - the Fifth Plan (1974-79) 'Garibi Hatao' and self-reliance, the Sixth (1980-85) poverty removal with technological self-reliance, and the Eighth (1992-97) human resource development in the new liberalised setting. Hence the correct option is (c).

Hampi Dance Utsav The annual Hampi Dance Utsav (Hampi Utsav or Vijaya Utsav) is held at Hampi in Karnataka, on the banks of the Tungabhadra in Vijayanagara district. The site itself is the clue: Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire in the 14th century, and its Group of Monuments is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; the festival, usually held around November, revives the empire's own court celebrations. The other three States have their own well-known dance festivals - the Konark Dance Festival in Odisha and the Mamallapuram Dance Festival in Tamil Nadu, while Jharkhand's big celebration is the tribal festival Sarhul. Hence the correct option is (c).

Objectives of fiscal policy Fiscal policy is the government's use of taxation and public expenditure to steer the economy, and its standard objectives are full employment, price stability, faster growth and a fairer distribution of income. Of the four choices only "to ensure maximum employment" is such an objective - in a slowdown the government raises spending or cuts taxes so that demand, output and jobs rise. Destabilising the economy and pushing inflation are the very outcomes fiscal policy tries to prevent, and selling goods to a particular country is a matter of trade policy, not of the Budget. Hence the correct option is (c).

Salinity of water bodies Ocean water is by far the saltiest of the four: its average salinity is about 35 grams of dissolved salts per kilogram of water, that is 35 parts per thousand (ppt). The reason is a one-way traffic. Rivers keep carrying dissolved salts down to the sea, but water leaves the sea only by evaporation, and evaporation takes the water and leaves the salt behind - so salt accumulates. Rivers, ponds and ordinary lakes are fed by rain and runoff and drain away again, so no salt piles up in them; they count as fresh water, below 0.5 ppt. Hence the correct option is (d).

Water Act - pollution boards The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act works through a two-tier machinery, and the 2024 Amendment keeps both tiers: the Central Pollution Control Board at the Centre and a State Pollution Control Board in every State. So the boards exist at the central and the state level together - the Centre lays down standards and coordinates, the States enforce consent-to-establish and consent-to-operate on industries. What the 2024 Amendment actually changes is different: it decriminalises the smaller violations by replacing imprisonment with monetary penalties and gives the Centre a role in prescribing how a State Board's chairman is appointed. It applies at first to Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Union Territories; any other State may adopt it by passing a resolution in its legislature. Hence the correct option is (b).

Removal of a Supreme Court judge A removal motion against a judge of the Supreme Court must be signed by at least 100 members if it is moved in the Lok Sabha, or by at least 50 members if it is moved in the Rajya Sabha. The numbers are easy to hold together: the smaller House needs half as many signatures as the larger one. Signatures only get the motion admitted. The Speaker or the Chairman then admits it and a three-member committee - a Supreme Court judge, a High Court Chief Justice and a distinguished jurist - inquires into the charge. If the charge is proved, each House must pass the motion by a majority of its total membership and by a two-thirds majority of the members present and voting, after which the President issues the order of removal. The only grounds are 'proved misbehaviour or incapacity' under Article 124(4), and the procedure is laid down in the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968. Hence the correct option is (c).

NITI Aayog The National Institution for Transforming India - NITI Aayog - was set up on 1 January 2015 by a resolution of the Union Cabinet. It replaced the Planning Commission of 1950, and the change of role is what makes the date memorable: the Planning Commission allocated funds to States, while NITI Aayog only advises, so the Five-Year Plans ended with the Twelfth Plan in 2017. The Prime Minister is its Chairperson; its Governing Council has all the Chief Ministers and the Lieutenant Governors of the Union Territories, and it is run day to day by a Vice-Chairman and a Chief Executive Officer. Hence the correct option is (b).

Census 2011 - State populations Among the four States listed, Bihar was the most populous in Census 2011, with about 10.41 crore people. Fix the top of the list once and this question answers itself: in 2011 the three most populous States were Uttar Pradesh (19.98 crore), Maharashtra (11.24 crore) and Bihar (10.41 crore). West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan all fall below Bihar, and Rajasthan - the largest State by area - is the smallest of the four by population, which is the trap the option set sets up. Hence the correct option is (a).

Carbonyl functional groups In an aldehyde the carbonyl carbon carries exactly one hydrogen atom and one carbon group, so the group is written R-CHO - which is precisely the combination the question describes. In a ketone the same carbonyl carbon is joined to two carbon groups, R-CO-R, with no hydrogen on it; in a carboxylic acid it is joined to an -OH, giving R-COOH; in an amide it is joined to nitrogen, giving $R-CON{H}_2$. That one hydrogen is also why aldehydes are easily oxidised to acids and give a positive Tollens' (silver mirror) test, while ketones do not. Hence the correct option is (a).

Mudiyettu - UNESCO heritage Mudiyettu is a ritual dance-drama of Kerala, performed in Bhagavathi (Kali) temples of the villages along the Chalakudy, Periyar and Moovattupuzha rivers. It re-enacts the battle of the goddess Kali with the demon Darika, and is staged after the summer harvest, roughly between February and May - the whole village takes part, which is why UNESCO treats it as living community heritage. UNESCO inscribed it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010, making it Kerala's second entry after Koodiyattam Sanskrit theatre. Hence the correct option is (c).

Governor-General in 1857 Lord Canning took charge as Governor-General in 1856 and was therefore in office through the Revolt of 1857. He is the hinge of the whole period: the Government of India Act, 1858 transferred power from the East India Company to the British Crown, and Canning continued as the first Viceroy of India. Dalhousie, whose Doctrine of Lapse annexations helped cause the resentment, had already left in 1856; Ripon (1880-84) and Curzon (1899-1905) came decades after the revolt. Hence the correct option is (c).

National MPI 2023 In NITI Aayog's National Multidimensional Poverty Index 2023 - built on NFHS-5 data of 2019-21 - Jharkhand had the largest share of multidimensionally poor people among the four options, about $28.8\%$. The index does not measure income at all: it counts deprivation on 12 indicators grouped under health, education and standard of living, and a household deprived in at least one-third of the weighted indicators is called poor. Bihar was the poorest State overall at about $33.8\%$, but Bihar is not in the option set - among those given, Meghalaya and Uttar Pradesh come below Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh is far lower. Hence the correct option is (b).

Bundi Utsav Bundi Utsav is celebrated at Bundi in Rajasthan, the Hadoti town famous for its stepwells (baoris), the Taragarh fort and the Bundi school of miniature painting. The three-day festival, usually held in November, opens with a shobha yatra and carries craft bazaars, turban-tying and moustache competitions, folk music and a fireworks night. The name itself is the clue: Bundi is a former Rajput princely state, and Rajasthan's calendar is full of such fairs - the Pushkar Fair, Gangaur, Teej and the Desert Festival of Jaisalmer. Hence the correct option is (a).

Viviparous animals Animals in which fertilisation is internal and the embryo also develops inside the mother's body until birth are called viviparous. Almost all mammals are viviparous - humans, dogs, cows, whales - and the developing young is fed through the placenta, which is why the young is born alive and comparatively well formed. Oviparous animals lay fertilised eggs and the embryo develops outside the mother, inside the egg - birds, most reptiles, amphibians and fishes. 'Vertebrate' and 'invertebrate' are not options of the same kind at all: they classify animals by the presence of a backbone, not by how the young develop. Hence the correct option is (d).

Committee on Simultaneous Elections The High-Level Committee on Simultaneous Elections, constituted on 2 September 2023 under former President Ram Nath Kovind, had Arjun Ram Meghwal - Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Law and Justice - sitting with it as a Special Invitee. There is a reason he and no other minister apart from the Home Minister appears: the Ministry of Law and Justice provided the secretariat for the committee, so its minister sat with it. Its members were Amit Shah, Ghulam Nabi Azad, N. K. Singh, Subhash C. Kashyap, Harish Salve and Sanjay Kothari; Dr. Niten Chandra was Secretary to the committee, not a member. The committee gave its 18,626-page report to President Droupadi Murmu in March 2024. Gadkari, Nadda and Jaishankar hold Road Transport, Health and External Affairs respectively, and none of them was on this committee. Hence the correct option is (a).