BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 47 of 143

Correct — D, Jamui. Shreyasi Singh won the Jamui assembly seat in the Bihar Legislative Assembly election of November 2020, contesting on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket and taking the seat by a margin of more than 41,000 votes. She was a shooter long before she was a legislator. Born on 29 August 1991 at Gidhaur in Bihar, and the daughter of Digvijay Singh — a former Union minister who also served as president of the National Rifle Association of India — she won the women's double trap gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games at Gold Coast, silver in the same event at Glasgow in 2014, and a bronze in the double trap team event at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, with Asian Championship team golds in trap in 2012, 2014 and 2016. She went to Paris in 2024 in the women's trap, which is the fact the stem uses to identify her. The whole difficulty of this question sits in option (a). Gidhaur is where she was born and the seat of her family — a town in Jamui district that was the seat of a raj in the colonial period and still carries its Minto Tower — so anyone who has read that she 'is from Gidhaur' will reach for it. But the question asks which constituency elected her, and Gidhaur is not one. Jamui district's four assembly constituencies are Sikandra (Scheduled Caste), Jamui, Jhajha and Chakai, and it was Jamui that returned her. Birthplace and constituency simply are not the same fact, and here they are deliberately set one against the other within the same district.

• (a)Gidhaur — Her birthplace and her family's ancestral seat, in the same Jamui district — which is exactly why it is the first option and the most costly wrong answer. It is a town and block rather than one of the district's assembly constituencies, which are Sikandra (SC), Jamui, Jhajha and Chakai. Recognising the name is not the same as it being the answer.
• (b)Sugauli — An assembly constituency in East Champaran district, in the north-west of Bihar and far from Jamui in the south-east. Sugauli is famous for something else entirely — the treaty with Nepal signed in 1815 and ratified in 1816 that closed the Anglo-Nepalese War — which is why the name feels familiar to an aspirant and is placed here.
• (c)Kesaria — Also an East Champaran constituency, and again a name an aspirant will know for a different reason: the Kesariya stupa, one of the largest Buddhist stupas in India, excavated by the Archaeological Survey of India. Familiarity from history and archaeology is being used here to stand in for knowledge of the electoral map.

BPSC deliberately builds questions at the junction of two syllabus areas so that knowing only one of them is not enough. This item joins Bihar's political map to Indian sport: you must know both that Shreyasi Singh is a trap shooter who reached the Paris Olympics and that the seat she holds in the 243-member Bihar Legislative Assembly is Jamui. The Assembly was last elected in October–November 2020, in three phases, and its members are spread across the state's 38 districts, with each district holding several constituencies whose names are usually — but not always — those of its towns. That last qualification is the heart of this question. A district's most historically famous town is often not a constituency at all, either because delimitation folded it into a neighbouring seat or because the seat took a different name. Jamui district illustrates the point precisely: Gidhaur is its best-known historic town and Simultala its best-known hill retreat, yet the four constituencies are Sikandra, Jamui, Jhajha and Chakai.

Approach it by district first and person second. Three of the four options can be placed on the map before you think about the shooter at all: Sugauli and Kesaria are both in East Champaran, at the other end of the state, and their fame comes from the 1815–16 treaty with Nepal and from a Buddhist stupa respectively — neither has any sporting or Jamui connection. That leaves Gidhaur and Jamui, both in Jamui district, and the question has narrowed to a single discrimination. Resolve it with the rule that a person's birthplace, family seat and constituency are three separate facts that a question can set against each other. Here they are: born at Gidhaur, elected from Jamui. The general lesson is worth more than the particular answer, because the Commission repeatedly pairs a public figure with a place name that is true of them in some other sense. When a stem asks 'elected from', 'represents' or 'is the member for', it is asking only about the constituency, and any place attached to the person for a different reason is a decoy.

• Shreyasi Singh was elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly from the Jamui constituency in the election of November 2020, on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket, by a margin of more than 41,000 votes
• She was born on 29 August 1991 at Gidhaur in Bihar; her father Digvijay Singh was a former Union minister and a president of the National Rifle Association of India
• Her shooting record includes gold in women's double trap at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, silver in the same event at Glasgow in 2014, a bronze in the double trap team event at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, and Asian Championship trap team golds in 2012, 2014 and 2016
• Jamui district's four assembly constituencies are Sikandra (Scheduled Caste), Jamui, Jhajha and Chakai; Gidhaur is a town and block in the district, the seat of a raj in the colonial period, and not one of the four
• Sugauli and Kesaria are assembly constituencies of East Champaran district — Sugauli known for the Anglo-Nepalese treaty signed in 1815 and ratified in 1816, Kesaria for one of the largest Buddhist stupas in India

• Marking a politician's birthplace or family seat when the stem asks which constituency elected them
• Assuming a district's most famous town must be an assembly constituency; delimitation often leaves it inside a differently named seat
• Recognising Sugauli and Kesaria from history and archaeology and treating that familiarity as knowledge of where they are on the electoral map

BPSC pairs a current-affairs personality with Bihar's political geography and expects both halves — the person's achievement and the exact constituency, district or scheme they are attached to — so learn a Bihar name with its place attached. UPSC does not ask about state assembly constituencies at all; when it touches sport it asks structural or general questions, such as which sport an award belongs to or which city hosted a Games.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In which shooting event did Shreyasi Singh win a gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast ?

  • (a)10 m air rifle
  • (b)Women's double trap
  • (c)25 m pistol
  • (d)50 m rifle three positions

  Answer(b) Women's double trap — she had taken silver in the same event at Glasgow in 2014 before winning gold at Gold Coast in 2018.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Sugauli, which gave its name to the treaty that ended the Anglo-Nepalese War, lies in which district of Bihar ?

  • (a)Jamui
  • (b)East Champaran
  • (c)Saran
  • (d)Madhubani

  Answer(b) East Champaran — the treaty was signed in 1815 and ratified in 1816; Kesaria, with its large Buddhist stupa, is in the same district.