Which of the following pairs of Institute and their location is/are correctly matched? 1. Indian Institute of Advanced Study : Shimla 2. Indian Institue of Public Administration : New Delhi 3. Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service : Nainital Select the answer using the code given below :

Q: What is the answer to CDS (II) 2025 GK Q16?

A. Correct — A, 1 and 2. The first two pairs are right and the third is not. The Indian Institute of Advanced Study is at Shimla, in Rashtrapati Nivas on Observatory Hill at Boileauganj — the building put up as the Viceregal Lodge for Lord Dufferin, Viceroy from 1884 to 1888. The Institute was created as a society in October 1964 and inaugurated by S. Radhakrishnan on 20 October 1965, and it has been a residential centre for advanced research in the humanities and social sciences ever since. The Indian Institute of Public Administration, founded in 1954, is at Indraprastha Estate on Mahatma Gandhi Marg in New Delhi, where it trains serving officers and runs research on administration. The third pair is the one that breaks. The Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service is the Ministry of External Affairs' training school for the Indian Foreign Service; it was set up in 1986 as the Foreign Service Institute, moved in 2007 into the old JNU campus on Baba Ganganath Marg near Munirka, and was renamed on 14 February 2020 in honour of the late External Affairs Minister on her sixty-eighth birth anniversary. Its address is New Delhi, not Nainital. Since only pairs 1 and 2 are matched correctly, the code is (a). (Provisional — pending the official UPSC key.)

(a)1 and 2
(b)2 and 3
(c)1 only
(d)2 only

Answer

Why

Correct — A, 1 and 2. The first two pairs are right and the third is not. The Indian Institute of Advanced Study is at Shimla, in Rashtrapati Nivas on Observatory Hill at Boileauganj — the building put up as the Viceregal Lodge for Lord Dufferin, Viceroy from 1884 to 1888. The Institute was created as a society in October 1964 and inaugurated by S. Radhakrishnan on 20 October 1965, and it has been a residential centre for advanced research in the humanities and social sciences ever since. The Indian Institute of Public Administration, founded in 1954, is at Indraprastha Estate on Mahatma Gandhi Marg in New Delhi, where it trains serving officers and runs research on administration. The third pair is the one that breaks. The Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service is the Ministry of External Affairs' training school for the Indian Foreign Service; it was set up in 1986 as the Foreign Service Institute, moved in 2007 into the old JNU campus on Baba Ganganath Marg near Munirka, and was renamed on 14 February 2020 in honour of the late External Affairs Minister on her sixty-eighth birth anniversary. Its address is New Delhi, not Nainital. Since only pairs 1 and 2 are matched correctly, the code is (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)2 and 3 — Keeps the one false pair and throws out a true one. The diplomatic academy is in New Delhi, a short distance from the Ministry it serves; nothing of the kind sits at Nainital.
(c)1 only — Drops pair 2, which is sound. The Indian Institute of Public Administration has been at Indraprastha Estate in New Delhi since the 1950s.
(d)2 only — Drops pair 1. Shimla is exactly where the Indian Institute of Advanced Study is, and its building — Rashtrapati Nivas — is one of the best-known structures in the town.

Concept

India's national institutes of research and training are scattered by history rather than by plan, and CDS tests whether you can place them. Three are involved here. The Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Shimla is a residential fellowship centre for the humanities, funded by the Ministry of Education. The Indian Institute of Public Administration in New Delhi, founded in 1954 with Jawaharlal Nehru as its first president, trains civil servants and publishes on public administration. The Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service in New Delhi runs the professional training of Indian Foreign Service probationers and of diplomats from partner countries.

The item is decided entirely by pair 3, and it is built on a real pattern: central government academies really do cluster in hill stations, so a hill town is a plausible-sounding home for anything you cannot place. Mussoorie has the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Shimla has the Institute of Advanced Study, Dehradun has the Indian Military Academy and the Forest Research Institute. Nainital, though, has no such academy — its national institution is ARIES, the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, an astronomy centre. And a diplomatic school has a strong reason to stay in the capital: its trainees are attached to the Ministry of External Affairs, they sit in on briefings, and foreign delegations come to them. Two printed slips are worth seeing and setting aside — the paper prints 'Institue' for Institute in pair 2, and 'pairs of Institute and their location is/are' does not agree in number. Neither touches what is being tested, and the question is reproduced here exactly as printed.

Key facts

The Indian Institute of Advanced Study was constituted as a society on 6 October 1964 and inaugurated by S. Radhakrishnan on 20 October 1965.
It occupies Rashtrapati Nivas at Boileauganj, Shimla, built as the Viceregal Lodge for Lord Dufferin, Viceroy from 1884 to 1888.
The Indian Institute of Public Administration was established in 1954 and is at Indraprastha Estate, Mahatma Gandhi Marg, New Delhi.
The Foreign Service Institute was set up in 1986, moved to the old JNU campus on Baba Ganganath Marg near Munirka in New Delhi in 2007, and was renamed the Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service on 14 February 2020.
Nainital's national institution is ARIES, the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences; the civil services academy in the hills is at Mussoorie, not Nainital.

Study next

Civil services training academies and who goes where — LBSNAA Mussoorie, SVPNPA Hyderabad, NADT Nagpur, IGNFA DehradunThe Ministry of External Affairs and how Indian Foreign Service probationers are trainedAutonomous research institutes under the Ministry of Education and the Indian Council of Social Science ResearchColonial hill-station architecture reused by the Republic — Viceregal Lodge, Rashtrapati Niketan and the summer capitalsScientific institutions and their towns: ARIES Nainital, IIA Bengaluru, PRL Ahmedabad, NCRA Pune

Common traps

Assuming a training academy must be in a hill station because several famous ones are.
Reading Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service as a new body — it is the 1986 Foreign Service Institute renamed in 2020, at the same New Delhi address.
Confusing the Indian Institute of Public Administration with the Indian Institute of Advanced Study because the names run together; one trains administrators in Delhi, the other hosts humanities fellows in Shimla.

Usually as institute-to-city pairs with one deliberately displaced, occasionally reversed into 'which institution is located at X' or a List I to List II match.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2001_GS1_Q462001Open & attempt →

Match List I with List II and select the correct answer using the codes given below the Lists: List I (Institute) I. Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants II. Centre for DNA Finger Printing and Diagnostics III. Institute of Microbial Technology IV. National Institute of Immunology List II (Location) A) Chandigarh B) Hyderabad C) New Delhi D) Lucknow

(a) I-B, II-D, III-A, IV-C
(b) I-D, II-B, III-A, IV-C
(c) I-B, II-D, III-C, IV-A
(d) I-D, II-B, III-C, IV-A

Answer(b) I-D, II-B, III-A, IV-C

The same skill in its purest form — placing national institutes on the map. That item pairs four research bodies with Lucknow, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and New Delhi; this one pairs three training and research institutes with Shimla, New Delhi and a wrong hill town.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Indian Institute of Advanced Study is housed in which one of the following buildings?
- (a)Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla
- (b)Hyderabad House, New Delhi
- (c)Charleville Mansion, Mussoorie
- (d)The Residency, Lucknow
Answer(a) Rashtrapati Nivas, Shimla — the former Viceregal Lodge on Observatory Hill, handed over to the Institute when it was inaugurated in 1965.
practice — not a real PYQ
The Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service functions under which one of the following ministries?
- (a)Ministry of Home Affairs
- (b)Ministry of External Affairs
- (c)Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions
- (d)Ministry of Education
Answer(b) Ministry of External Affairs — it is the Ministry's own training institute for Indian Foreign Service probationers and for diplomats from partner countries.