BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 40 of 150

Correct — D, None of the above. Read the stem's grammar before its content: it asks which statement is NOT correct about U-WIN. All three are correct, so none of them qualifies, and the only surviving option is (d). The Commission said exactly this when it disposed of objections on 31 October 2025 — all three options are correct about the U-WIN portal. Each one can be matched against the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's own description. U-WIN is the digital platform that digitalises every vaccination service delivered under the Universal Immunisation Programme, covering pregnant women and children from birth to 16 years against 12 vaccine-preventable diseases; the Programme's annual target is about 2.9 crore pregnant women and 2.6 crore infants aged 0-1 year. In the Ministry's published list of U-WIN's key features you will find, in this order, 'Anytime Access' and 'Anywhere' vaccination services, generation of an Ayushman Bharat Health Account and a Child ABHA, a citizen module, automated SMS alerts, a QR-based e-Vaccination Certificate and an offline mode for vaccinators working without connectivity. Statement (a) is that QR-based certificate. Statement (b) is the ABHA and Child ABHA pair — which is why the option says 'for parents and children'. Statement (c) matches the eleven Indian languages in which the platform's interface and its guidance material for citizens and front-line workers are served. In other words the three statements were assembled straight out of the Ministry's own feature list, which is the fastest way to see that none of them can be the false one. The scale confirms the platform is real and running: after a pilot in 63 districts across 35 States and Union Territories and a nationwide roll-out, 7.43 crore beneficiaries had been registered, 1.26 crore vaccination sessions held and 27.77 crore administered doses recorded as on 25 November 2024. One thing U-WIN is not: it is not a COVID-19 platform. It borrows CoWIN's architecture but its business is routine childhood and maternal immunisation.

• (a)It provides QR-based e-vaccination certificates — This statement is true, so it cannot answer a 'NOT CORRECT' stem. The QR-based e-Vaccination Certificate is named in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's own list of U-WIN's key features. It is the direct descendant of the CoWIN certificate, and it is what lets a parent produce a verifiable immunisation record anywhere in the country, including for school admission.
• (b)It facilitates the creation of Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts (ABHA) for parents and children. — Also true. The Ministry lists 'generation of Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) and Child ABHA' among U-WIN's key features — the Child ABHA is exactly why the option says 'for parents and children'. Candidates who know ABHA only as an adult health ID under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission may doubt that a newborn can hold one, and reject a statement that is correct.
• (c)The portal is accessible in 11 regional languages — True as well, and the most suspicious-looking of the three because a precise number in an option usually signals a planted error. Here the number is right: U-WIN is served in eleven Indian languages, and the Ministry records that the platform's guidance and FAQ material for citizens and front-line workers is published in the same eleven. A specific figure is not automatically a trap.

Two structures meet in this question. The first is the Universal Immunisation Programme, among the largest public health programmes anywhere: it delivers free vaccines against 12 vaccine-preventable diseases to an annual cohort of roughly 2.9 crore pregnant women and 2.6 crore infants, and its reach was pushed further by Mission Indradhanush from December 2014 and by the later Intensified rounds aimed at children and pregnant women who had been missed. The second is India's digital public infrastructure in health. The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, launched nationwide in September 2021, issues every citizen a voluntary Ayushman Bharat Health Account — a portable digital health identity to which records can be linked and carried across providers and States. CoWIN demonstrated during the pandemic that a national registry with a unique beneficiary record, session planning, SMS reminders and a verifiable QR certificate could work at population scale. U-WIN takes that architecture and points it at routine immunisation instead of a single emergency vaccine: one electronic record per pregnant woman and per child from birth to 16 years, follow-up alerts before each due dose, a QR-based certificate, an ABHA and a Child ABHA, and an offline mode so that an auxiliary nurse midwife in an area with no signal can still record a session and sync it later.

The reasoning is two-layered, and both layers are about reading rather than recall. First, notice that the stem is negative — 'NOT CORRECT' — and that the fourth option is 'None of the above' rather than the paper's usual 'More than one of the above'. That combination is deliberate. A candidate who verifies all three statements as true, and then reflexively hunts for an option reading 'All of the above', will not find one and may panic-mark a real statement as false. When every listed statement is true, the correct response to a negative stem is 'None of the above'. Second, the single fact that discriminates is recognising where the three statements came from. They are lifted, almost phrase for phrase, from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's published list of U-WIN's key features — QR-based e-Vaccination Certificate, generation of ABHA and Child ABHA, and the eleven-language interface. Once you see that the examiner has quoted the source rather than doctored it, the answer follows without needing to test each claim independently. The remaining risk is confusing U-WIN with CoWIN. CoWIN was built for the COVID-19 vaccination drive; U-WIN reuses its design for the routine immunisation programme. Anyone who assumes U-WIN is a pandemic-era portal will mark statement (a) or (b) as belonging to the wrong platform and lose a third of a mark.

• U-WIN digitalises all vaccination services under the Universal Immunisation Programme for pregnant women and children from birth to 16 years, against 12 vaccine-preventable diseases; the Programme's annual target is about 2.9 crore pregnant women and 2.6 crore infants aged 0-1 year.
• The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare lists U-WIN's key features as 'Anytime Access' and 'Anywhere' vaccination services, generation of an Ayushman Bharat Health Account and a Child ABHA, a citizen module, automated SMS alerts, a QR-based e-Vaccination Certificate and an offline mode for vaccinators — the source of all three statements in this question.
• U-WIN was piloted in 63 districts across 35 States and Union Territories before its nationwide roll-out. As on 25 November 2024, 7.43 crore beneficiaries had been registered, 1.26 crore vaccination sessions held and 27.77 crore administered vaccine doses recorded on the platform.
• Bihar's numbers on U-WIN as on 25 November 2024: 1,51,07,436 beneficiaries registered and 6,71,69,747 doses recorded — the largest dose count of any State in the country, ahead of Uttar Pradesh's 5,90,78,156, though Uttar Pradesh led on registrations with 1,62,02,760.
• The platform issues automated SMS alerts for registration, for each dose administered and as a reminder three days before a dose falls due, and offers mobile applications for both citizens and vaccinators. Its guidance and FAQ material is published in 11 Indian languages.

• Mistaking U-WIN for a COVID-19 platform — it borrows CoWIN's architecture but serves routine childhood and maternal immunisation under the Universal Immunisation Programme
• Mishandling a negative stem — when every listed statement is true, the answer to 'which is NOT correct' is 'None of the above', not an option reading 'All of the above' that the paper does not offer
• Treating a precise number in an option as an automatic red flag — the eleven Indian languages in statement (c) is the Ministry's own figure and is correct

BPSC builds this kind of item by copying three lines out of a current ministry release and then inverting the stem, so the work is in the reading rather than the recall — and the Commission's disposal of objections confirmed it meant exactly that. UPSC almost never quotes a portal's feature list. It asks whether a scheme's design principle holds: in 2022 it wanted to know whether adoption of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is mandatory and whether records are portable, and in 2016 it simply asked what Mission Indradhanush pertains to. BPSC tests the release; UPSC tests the design.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The U-WIN portal of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare digitalises vaccination services provided under which of the following ?

  • (a)Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana
  • (b)Universal Immunisation Programme
  • (c)Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan
  • (d)National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme

  Answer(b) Universal Immunisation Programme — U-WIN records every vaccination given under the UIP to pregnant women and to children from birth to 16 years, against 12 vaccine-preventable diseases.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Universal Immunisation Programme, the Government of India provides free vaccination against how many vaccine-preventable diseases ?

  • (a)7
  • (b)9
  • (c)12
  • (d)15

  Answer(c) 12 — the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare describes the Universal Immunisation Programme as protecting pregnant women and children against 12 vaccine-preventable diseases, with an annual target of about 2.9 crore pregnant women and 2.6 crore infants.