Prelims

With reference to Jainism in Indian history, consider the following statements:

1. Parshvanatha, remembered as the twenty-third tirthankara, prescribed four restraints for his followers, to which Mahavira added celibacy as a fifth.
2. The first attempt to collect the teachings of Mahavira was made at a council held at Pataliputra, while the canon was finally reduced to writing at a much later council at Valabhi in Gujarat.
3. The canonical texts of the Svetambara Jainas are preserved in a Prakrit dialect rather than in Sanskrit.
4. The colossal image of Gommateshvara at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka was set up by Chamundaraya, a minister of a Ganga ruler.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Consider the following pairs of classical Sanskrit works and their authors:

1. Harshacharita — Banabhatta
2. Kiratarjuniya — Magha
3. Kadambari — Dandin
4. Rajatarangini — Kalhana

How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

With reference to tribal uprisings in colonial India, consider the following statements:

1. The Santhal rebellion of 1855-56 was led by Sidhu and Kanhu, and in its aftermath a separate administrative unit, the Santhal Parganas, was carved out.
2. Birsa Munda's movement in Chotanagpur combined a religious message with the demand that the khuntkatti system of land tenure be restored.
3. The Rampa rebellion of 1922-24 in the agency tracts of the Godavari region was led by Alluri Sitarama Raju.
4. These risings were directed exclusively against British officials, and the traders, moneylenders and revenue farmers who had settled in the tribal tracts were never their targets.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Which one of the following best describes the harmika in the architecture of a Buddhist stupa?

Which one of the following best describes dyarchy, as introduced by the Government of India Act of 1919?

Consider the following statements regarding karst topography:

1. It develops mainly where thick beds of limestone or dolomite are dissolved by rainwater that has turned weakly acidic after absorbing carbon dioxide.
2. Stalactites grow downward from the roof of a cave while stalagmites build upward from its floor, and the two may eventually join to form a pillar.
3. Sinkholes, also called dolines, are surface depressions that may form either by solution or by the collapse of a cave roof, and several of them merging produce a larger depression called an uvala.
4. In a well-developed karst region much of the drainage is underground, with surface streams disappearing into swallow holes and re-emerging further away as springs.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Consider the following pairs of mineral-producing localities and the States in which they lie:

1. Bailadila — Chhattisgarh
2. Panna — Madhya Pradesh
3. Khetri — Haryana
4. Talcher — Jharkhand

How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

Consider the following statements about the cropping seasons and crops of India:

1. Kharif crops are sown with the onset of the south-west monsoon and harvested around September and October, and rice, bajra and cotton are among them.
2. Rabi crops are sown in the winter months and harvested between April and June, and wheat, barley, gram and mustard are among them.
3. Zaid is a short season between the harvest of rabi crops and the sowing of kharif crops, during which watermelon, muskmelon, cucumber and fodder crops are raised.
4. Jowar and bajra are grown mainly in the heavy-rainfall districts of the north-eastern States, because these millets need soils that remain moist through the year.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Salinity is not spread evenly across the seas, varying both with latitude and with depth. Which one of the following statements about its distribution is correct?

With reference to inversion of temperature in the atmosphere, which one of the following statements is correct?

With reference to the constitutional provisions relating to municipalities, consider the following statements:

1. The Twelfth Schedule, inserted by the Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992, lists eighteen functional items which the legislature of a State may entrust to the municipalities.
2. The Constitution envisages three kinds of municipalities — a Nagar Panchayat for an area in transition from a rural area to an urban area, a Municipal Council for a smaller urban area, and a Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area.
3. Wards Committees are to be constituted within the territorial area of a municipality having a population of three lakh or more.
4. A District Planning Committee is to be constituted in every State at the district level to consolidate the plans prepared by the panchayats and the municipalities in the district.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

With reference to the provisions of the Constitution relating to language, consider the following statements:

1. The Constitution declares Hindi in the Devanagari script to be the official language of the Union, and it also lays down that the form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals.
2. The Special Officer for Linguistic Minorities is appointed by the President, and the office was created not by the Constitution as originally adopted but by a later constitutional amendment.
3. A State legislature may adopt as the official language of that State only a language that is specified in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution, and no other.
4. English ceased to be available for the official purposes of the Union fifteen years after the commencement of the Constitution, and its continued use today rests on the discretion of the President.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Which one of the following statements is correct with regard to the disqualification of a member of Parliament?

Consider the following pairs:

1. Central Vigilance Commission — set up in 1964 by a resolution of the Government of India and given statutory status by an Act of Parliament in 2003
2. National Human Rights Commission — a statutory body established under the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993
3. Lokpal — a statutory body established under the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013
4. NITI Aayog — a constitutional body established by an amendment to the Constitution in 2015

How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?

Which one of the following statements is correct with regard to Article 262 of the Constitution and the adjudication of inter-State river water disputes?

With reference to the classification of micro, small and medium enterprises in India, consider the following statements:

1. An enterprise is classified as micro, small or medium on the basis of a composite criterion that takes into account both its investment and its turnover.
2. Separate investment thresholds are prescribed for enterprises engaged in manufacturing and for enterprises rendering services.
3. Registration on the Udyam portal is free of cost and is granted on the basis of self-declaration by the enterprise.
4. An enterprise that crosses the prescribed limits ceases to hold its existing status with immediate effect from the date of crossing them.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Consider the following pairs of economic indicators and the bodies that compile or conduct them:

1. Index of Industrial Production — National Statistical Office
2. Index of Core Industries — Office of the Economic Adviser in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade
3. Consumer Price Index for Industrial Workers — Labour Bureau
4. Consumer Confidence Survey — Securities and Exchange Board of India

How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?

With reference to Ways and Means Advances, consider the following statements:

1. They are a temporary facility meant to bridge mismatches in the timing of a government's receipts and payments, and not a means of financing its fiscal deficit.
2. The Reserve Bank of India extends the facility under the statute governing it, and such advances are repayable within three months.
3. The facility is available to State Governments as well, and a State that draws beyond its sanctioned limit is said to be in overdraft.
4. Advances to the Central Government carry interest at the policy repo rate, while drawings beyond the limit attract a higher rate.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

In an economy, the "crowding out" effect refers to which one of the following situations?

With reference to pension arrangements in India, consider the following statements:

1. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority became a statutory body under an Act of Parliament enacted in 2013.
2. The Atal Pension Yojana is open to citizens between eighteen and forty years of age who hold a savings bank account.
3. Every subscriber to the National Pension System receives a pension that is a guaranteed proportion of the salary last drawn.
4. A subscriber to the Atal Pension Yojana is assured a minimum monthly pension on attaining the age of sixty.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

With reference to the measurement and effects of water pollution, consider the following statements:

1. Biochemical Oxygen Demand measures the oxygen consumed by micro-organisms while breaking down organic matter in a water sample, so a higher value indicates heavier organic pollution.
2. For the same sample of water, the Chemical Oxygen Demand is generally higher than its Biochemical Oxygen Demand.
3. Enrichment of a water body with nitrogen and phosphorus can set off an algal bloom whose later decay strips oxygen from the water and kills fish.
4. The quantity of oxygen that can stay dissolved in water falls as the temperature of the water rises.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

With reference to how forest cover is assessed and reported in India, consider the following statements:

1. Forest cover is taken to mean all land more than one hectare in area carrying a tree canopy density of more than ten per cent, irrespective of who owns the land or what its legal status is.
2. A patch classified as Scrub, carrying a canopy density below ten per cent, is counted within the country's reported forest cover.
3. The assessment is carried out by the Forest Survey of India and the report is brought out once every two years.
4. Recorded Forest Area and forest cover are the same thing, because only land legally notified as forest can be mapped as forest cover.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Consider the following pairs of ecological terms and their meanings:

1. Ecotone — the zone of transition between two distinct communities, such as an estuary lying between a river and the sea
2. Edge effect — the phenomenon by which certain species occur in greater density in the transition zone than in either of the adjoining communities
3. Keystone species — a species whose removal brings about a disproportionately large change in the structure of its ecosystem, out of all proportion to its abundance
4. Ecological niche — the maximum number of individuals of a species that a given habitat can support indefinitely

How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

With reference to the National Green Tribunal, which one of the following statements is correct?

With reference to the funds operating under the international climate change regime, which one of the following statements is correct?

With reference to the United Nations Security Council, consider the following statements:

1. The ten non-permanent members are elected by the General Assembly for a term of two years, and a retiring member is not eligible for immediate re-election.
2. The G4 group of countries, whose members support one another's candidature for permanent seats, consists of Brazil, Germany, India and Japan.
3. An amendment to the Charter of the United Nations comes into force only when it has been adopted by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified by two-thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.
4. India has served as a non-permanent member of the Security Council on eight occasions, the most recent of these terms being that of 2021-22.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

With reference to the Arctic Council, consider the following statements:

1. It was established by the Ottawa Declaration of 1996, and its permanent Secretariat is located at Tromso in Norway.
2. India was granted Observer status in the Arctic Council in 2013, and released its own Arctic Policy in 2022.
3. India's research station Himadri, which began functioning in 2008, is located in Antarctica.
4. Matters relating to military security fall squarely within the declared mandate of the Arctic Council.

How many of the statements given above are correct?

Consider the following pairs of multilateral development banks and the facts stated about them:

1. New Development Bank — established by the BRICS countries, with its headquarters at Shanghai
2. Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — headquartered at Beijing, with India as its second largest shareholder
3. Asian Development Bank — headquartered at Manila, with the People's Republic of China as its largest shareholder
4. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — headquartered at London, with India as a member since 2018

How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?

Which one of the following statements about the Special Drawing Right of the International Monetary Fund is correct?

With reference to the G20, consider the following statements:

1. It has no permanent secretariat, and its agenda is steered by a rotating presidency assisted by a troika of the immediately preceding, the current and the incoming presidencies.
2. The African Union was admitted as a member of the G20 at the New Delhi Summit of 2023.
3. The G20 began in 1999 as a forum of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, and was raised to the level of a Leaders' Summit in 2008.
4. Declarations adopted at G20 Summits are legally binding on the member countries.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

With reference to India’s Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme, consider the following statements:

1. Small Modular Reactors are defined as nuclear reactors with power output generally up to 300 MWe per module.
2. India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) is developing a High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor (HTGCR) that is intended to be coupled with a thermochemical cycle for hydrogen production.
3. The SHANTI Act, 2025, enables private sector participation in India’s nuclear energy sector for the first time.
4. India currently has the world’s largest fleet of operational Small Modular Reactors.

How many of the above statements are correct?

With reference to CAR-T cell therapy, recently in the news, consider the following statements:

1. It is a form of immunotherapy in which a patient’s own T-cells are genetically modified in a laboratory to recognise and attack cancer cells.
2. India’s first indigenous CAR-T therapy, NexCAR19, was developed collaboratively by IIT Bombay and Tata Memorial Centre.
3. Unlike conventional chemotherapy, CAR-T cell therapy uses the patient’s own immune system as the treatment mechanism.
4. CAR-T cell therapy is primarily used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

With reference to the LIGO-India project, recently in the news, consider the following statements:

1. It is a gravitational wave detection observatory being built at Aundha in Maharashtra as a joint India-US collaboration.
2. The observatory uses laser interferometry — where lasers bounce between mirrors along L-shaped vacuum tubes — to detect distortions in space-time caused by violent cosmic events.
3. A key reason for building LIGO-India is to improve the sky-localisation of gravitational wave sources by adding a new baseline to the global detector network.
4. The observatory can only detect gravitational waves from events within our own Milky Way galaxy.

How many of the above statements are correct?

Consider the following statements about India’s private space sector:

1. Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 is the first privately developed Indian rocket to successfully reach Earth orbit.
2. The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) is the regulatory body that authorises private launch activities in India.
3. Vikram-1 is a four-stage rocket that uses only liquid fuel stages throughout.
4. With this launch, India became the third country, after the United States and China, to have a private company achieve orbital launch capability.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

With reference to India’s National Quantum Mission (NQM), consider the following statements:

1. The mission aims to develop intermediate-scale quantum computers with 50–1000 physical qubits over the mission period.
2. One of the mission’s objectives includes developing satellite-based secure quantum communication over distances exceeding 2000 km.
3. The mission is being implemented only through defence research laboratories under DRDO.
4. Quantum Key Distribution, which is one of the mission’s focus areas, is a method of secure communication that relies on the principles of quantum mechanics to detect any attempt at eavesdropping.

How many of the above statements are correct?

With reference to the recent decision on polymer bank notes in India, consider the following statements:

1. The Central Government has approved the Reserve Bank of India to issue 2 billion polymer bank notes for a field trial in denominations of ₹10 and ₹20.
2. Under Section 22 of the RBI Act, 1934, the design and material of bank notes are recommended by the RBI Central Board and approved by the Central Government.
3. India had previously attempted a polymer note trial in 2012, but it was shelved due to technical hurdles.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

Which of the following institutions are involved in the printing of currency notes in India?

1. Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL)
2. Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Limited (SPMCIL)
3. India Government Mint
4. National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL)

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

The term "Seigniorage", in the context of currency issuance, refers to:

Consider the following statements regarding currency issuance in India:

1. The Reserve Bank of India has the sole right to issue all denominations of bank notes and coins in India.
2. The one-rupee note in India is issued by the Ministry of Finance and bears the signature of the Finance Secretary.
3. The Clean Note Policy of the RBI was introduced in 1999 to withdraw soiled and damaged notes from circulation.

Which of the statements given above are correct?

Which of the following is/are cited as reasons for introducing polymer bank notes in India?

1. Higher durability compared to cotton-based paper notes
2. Rising currency printing costs
3. Complete elimination of counterfeit currency
4. Reduction in long-term replacement expenditure

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Australia is often mentioned in the context of polymer bank notes because:

Consider the following statements about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC):

1. It is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, operated by CERN.
2. The ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC led to the discovery of the Higgs boson.
3. India is a full Member State of CERN.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

With reference to the PRAXIS mission concept, recently seen in news, which of the following statements is/are correct?

1. It is a NASA spacecraft concept aimed at directly collecting and studying particles from planetary ring systems such as those of Saturn.
2. It received funding under NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) programme.

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

Consider the following statements:

1. Blue Straggler Stars are found in old star clusters but appear younger and hotter than the other stars of the same cluster.
2. One mechanism for their formation is mass transfer between stars in a binary system.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

With reference to India’s Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) norms, consider the following statements:

1. CAFE norms set fuel efficiency targets for a manufacturer’s entire fleet of passenger vehicles, rather than for individual models.
2. These norms are administered by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) under the Energy Conservation Act, 2001.
3. The norms apply to all categories of motor vehicles, including heavy commercial vehicles.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

With reference to viral hepatitis, consider the following statements:

1. World Hepatitis Day is observed on 28 July to mark the birthday of Nobel laureate Dr. Baruch Blumberg, who discovered the Hepatitis B virus.
2. Among the five types of hepatitis viruses, Hepatitis B and C are the leading causes of chronic liver disease and liver cancer.
3. Hepatitis A and E are primarily transmitted through contaminated water and food.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?