25 February 2025 · Shift 2

Composition of urea Urea (carbamide) has the formula $CO{\left(N{H}_2\right)}_2$ - one carbonyl group joined to two amino groups. So one molecule carries 1 carbon, 1 oxygen, 4 hydrogen and 2 nitrogen atoms: four different elements in all. Options (a), (b) and (c) all leave out oxygen, but the oxygen sits in the carbonyl $C=O$ at the centre of the molecule. Hence the correct option is (d).

Ocean currents The Gulf Stream rises in the Gulf of Mexico, runs north-east along the eastern coast of the United States and then crosses to Europe as the North Atlantic Drift. Every part of that path lies in the Atlantic Ocean, and the warmth it carries is what keeps the ports of north-west Europe ice-free in winter. The Pacific's matching warm current is the Kuroshio, the Indian Ocean's is the Agulhas, and the Southern Ocean carries the cold Antarctic Circumpolar Current - so (a), (b) and (c) are ruled out. Hence the correct option is (d).

Nritya Kalanidhi Award Vidushi Vasanthalakshmi Narasimhachari is a Chennai-based dancer who performs and teaches Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi, the pair she and her late husband Narasimhachari made famous as a duo. For that work the Music Academy, Madras conferred on her the Nritya Kalanidhi - its highest honour in dance - for 2023, presented at the Academy's dance festival in January 2024. The other options pair forms she is not identified with: Sattriya (Assam), Mohiniyattam (Kerala), Manipuri and Chau (Manipur and eastern India), Kathak (north India) and Odissi (Odisha). Hence the correct option is (c).

Classical dance of Kerala Mohiniyattam is the lasya (soft, graceful, solo-feminine) classical dance of Kerala; its name comes from Mohini, the enchantress form of Vishnu. It took its present shape in the nineteenth century under Maharaja Swathi Thirunal (1813-1846) of Travancore, himself a composer, who gathered its repertoire at his court. Kuchipudi is from Andhra Pradesh and Kathak from north India, so neither could be shaped in Travancore; Kathakali, though also of Kerala, is the vigorous tandava dance-drama with elaborate masks and male performers - not the lasya form Swathi Thirunal nurtured. Hence the correct option is (b).

42nd Amendment and DPSP Part IV of the Constitution originally listed the Directive Principles; the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 enlarged that list by four. Article 39(f) was recast and Articles 39A, 43A and 48A were newly inserted - four additions in all. The later amendments changed the count again (the 44th Amendment of 1978 added Article 38(2) and the 86th of 2002 recast Article 45), but the question asks only about 1976. Hence the correct option is (d).

PM Surya Ghar Yojana PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana was announced by the Prime Minister on 13 February 2024 and cleared by the Union Cabinet on 29 February 2024 - so its launch month is February 2024. The scheme gives rooftop solar panels to one crore households with up to 300 free units of electricity a month, at an outlay of ₹75,021 crore up to FY 2026-27. Because the scheme was already in operation and being reported through the middle of 2024, the later dates offered in (a), (b) and (c) cannot be its launch. Hence the correct option is (d).

Greek envoy to Mauryas Megasthenes was sent by Seleucus I Nicator as his ambassador to Chandragupta Maurya and lived at the Mauryan capital Pataliputra (modern Patna). He recorded what he saw in a book called Indica; it survives only in quotations by later Greek and Roman writers, and it is a first-hand source on Mauryan administration, the city's committees, the army and society. Herodotus wrote in the fifth century BCE and never reached India, Ptolemy was a second-century CE geographer of Alexandria, and Pliny the Elder was a Roman naturalist - none of them visited Chandragupta's court. Hence the correct option is (a).

Sports equipment Read the list as one kit: a bow and a string to shoot with, a bracer to guard the forearm and a finger tab to guard the drawing fingers, a quiver to hold arrows, a bow stand and a bow stringer to handle the bow, and a target to aim at. Every one of those items belongs to archery, the sport of shooting arrows from a bow at a target. Fencing needs a sword, mask and jacket; shooting needs a rifle or pistol; bobsleigh needs a sled, helmet and an ice track - none of them uses a bow or a quiver. Hence the correct option is (d).

Quit India Movement The All India Congress Committee passed the Quit India resolution at its Bombay (Gowalia Tank) session on 8 August 1942, and that evening Gandhiji gave the nation the call 'Do or Die' - Karo ya Maro. The date fixes the answer: only one of the four movements belongs to 1942. The Swadeshi Movement grew out of the Partition of Bengal in 1905, Non-Cooperation ran from 1920 to 1922, and Civil Disobedience began with the Dandi March in 1930 - each with a different call. Hence the correct option is (d).

Article 3 - renaming a state Article 3 of the Constitution empowers Parliament, by an ordinary law, to form a new State and to alter the area, boundaries or name of any existing State. Such a Bill may be introduced only on the President's prior recommendation and must first be referred to the legislature of the State concerned for its views - but that opinion is not binding, so the decision remains Parliament's. This is how Orissa became Odisha in 2011 and Uttaranchal became Uttarakhand in 2007. A Governor heads a State executive, the Chief Justice heads the judiciary and the Council of Ministers only advises - none of them can rename a State, so (a), (c) and (d) fail. Hence the correct option is (b).

Bismillah Khan's birthplace Ustad Bismillah Khan was born on 21 March 1916 at Dumraon, a town of the old Shahabad district that lies today in Buxar district of Bihar. He later made Varanasi his home, and on 15 August 1947 he played the shehnai at the Red Fort as India became independent. He received the Bharat Ratna in 2001, the highest of a set that also includes the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri. Dumraon lies in the Bhojpur-Buxar belt of Bihar, not in Himachal Pradesh, Kerala or Rajasthan. Hence the correct option is (d).

AIFF-FIFA Academy The AIFF-FIFA Talent Academy was opened at Bhubaneswar, Odisha on 21 November 2023, in the presence of Arsène Wenger, FIFA's Chief of Global Football Development. It is India's centre under FIFA's Talent Development Scheme and is run jointly by the All India Football Federation and the Government of Odisha, which already hosts the Kalinga Stadium football hub. The other cities offered have no academy under this FIFA scheme, so (b), (c) and (d) are wrong. Hence the correct option is (a).

Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy Dr. Ajit Kumar Mohanty, a nuclear physicist, took charge in May 2023 as Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and was holding both posts in October 2024. The two offices go together by convention, because the Secretary of the Department is also its Commission's chairman. Before this he was the thirteenth Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), from March 2019 to September 2023. Hence the correct option is (b).

How vaccination works Statement A is correct: a vaccine is exactly such a preparation - antigenic proteins of the pathogen, or the pathogen itself inactivated or weakened - put into the body so that the immune system meets the antigen without meeting the disease. Statement B is correct too: this primary response makes not only antibodies but also memory B-cells and memory T-cells, which survive long after the antigen is cleared. When the real pathogen enters later, those memory cells recognise it at once and mount a faster and much larger secondary response - this is the whole point of vaccinating in advance. Since both descriptions are accurate, the options that accept only one statement, or reject both, are wrong. Hence the correct option is (c).

ST literacy, Census 2011 Census 2011 records the literacy rate of the Scheduled Tribes as $58.96\%$, which the options round off to $59.00\%$. Set it against the same census's overall literacy rate of $73.0\%$ and the Scheduled Caste rate of $66.1\%$: the ST figure is the lowest of the three, which is why closing this gap is the aim of missions such as the National Literacy Mission and the Eklavya Model Residential Schools. That comparison also kills the distractors - $76.23\%$ and $84.90\%$ stand well above the national average, and $51.23\%$ falls below even the ST female rate of about $49\%$ read together with the male rate of about $69\%$. Hence the correct option is (b).

Agriculture schemes and years Statement i is correct: e-NAM, the pan-India electronic portal that links APMC mandis into one national market, was launched on 14 April 2016. Statement ii is correct: the agriculture credit flow reported for 2020-21 was ₹15,75,398 crore, above that year's target. Statement iii is wrong: the National Mission on Edible Oils - Oil Palm was launched in August 2021, to raise domestic palm oil output and cut import dependence, not in 2023. The question asks for the INCORRECT statements, and only iii fails, so the answer names iii alone. Hence the correct option is (b).

Best Republic Day tableau 2023 The theme word decides the answer: 'Manaskhand' is the traditional name of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, the temple belt described in the Skanda Purana. On Republic Day 2023 the Uttarakhand tableau built on that theme - showing the Baijnath temple, Adi Kailash and the state's wildlife - was judged the best of the 17 State and Union Territory tableaux. Bihar, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh have no region called Manaskhand, so their tableaux could not have carried this theme. Hence the correct option is (a).

Secular neighbour of India Nepal ended its status as the world's only Hindu kingdom and declared itself secular, first in the Interim Constitution of 2007 and then in the Constitution of Nepal, 2015, which promises to protect the country's ancient religious and cultural practices while keeping the State itself neutral. The test that separates the options is whether the country's constitution names a State religion. The Maldives, Afghanistan and Pakistan are all declared Islamic republics with Islam as the State religion, so none of them can be the answer. Hence the correct option is (c).

Role of the tertiary sector The service or tertiary sector does not produce goods at all; it supplies activities - transport, banking, insurance, trade, health, education, IT - that help every other activity to run. By employing large numbers, contributing the biggest share of India's GDP and feeding industry and agriculture with finance, logistics and consultancy, it directly aids economic development, which is what option (c) states. Raw materials come from the primary sector, so (a) belongs to mining and farming; manufacturing is the secondary sector, so (d) is misplaced. Option (b) is simply false - services support businesses of every size, from a village bank to a national airline. Hence the correct option is (c).

Foreign trade and markets Foreign trade lets a producer in one country sell to buyers in another, so goods, prices and choices in the two markets stop being independent of each other. Once prices in the home market start moving with prices abroad, the two markets behave as one - this is exactly what is meant by greater integration of markets, a defining feature of globalisation. Trade adds foreign sellers to the home market, so competition rises and prices tend to fall rather than rise: that rules out (b) and (c). And since trade connects markets across borders, it is the opposite of isolating them, so (d) fails. Hence the correct option is (a).