Consider the following statements regarding the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana : 1. It is applicable to all adults above the age group of 18 years. 2. The premium is deducted from the account holder's bank account through 'auto debit facility'. 3. The life insurance worth is decided by the account holder and he has to pay the annual premium accordingly. 4. The life insurance amount is given to the family after the death of the subscriber. Which of the above statements are correct ?
- (a)1 and 3 only
- (b)1 and 4 only
- (c)2 and 4 only
- (d)2 and 3 only
Answer
Why
Correct — C, (c) 2 and 4 only.
Statements 2 and 4 are true; statements 1 and 3 are false.
READ THE OPTION STRUCTURE FIRST, because it saves time. Every option pairs exactly one of statements 1 and 2 with exactly one of statements 3 and 4. So the item is two independent binary decisions — is the eligibility statement or the auto-debit statement the true one, and is the choice-of-cover statement or the payment-to-the-family statement the true one — and settling either half immediately halves the list.
STATEMENT 2 — "The premium is deducted from the account holder's bank account through 'auto debit facility'." TRUE, and it is the operating principle of the whole scheme. Enrolment is through a savings bank account, the subscriber gives a standing consent, and the annual premium is taken by auto-debit before the cover year begins. The design is deliberate: small annual policies of this kind lapse when a premium has to be remembered and paid, and auto-debit removes the lapse. The same machinery carries the accident scheme and the pension scheme launched alongside this one.
STATEMENT 4 — "The life insurance amount is given to the family after the death of the subscriber." TRUE. This is a term life cover: the sum assured of ₹ 2 lakh is payable to the nominee on the death of the member during the cover period, from ANY cause. There is no maturity value and nothing is returned if the member survives the year — which is what makes the premium so small. Cover for death from any cause is what distinguishes this scheme from the accident cover of its sibling, which pays only where death or disablement results from an accident.
STATEMENT 1 — "It is applicable to all adults above the age group of 18 years." FALSE. There is an UPPER limit as well as a lower one. Entry is open to savings bank account holders between eighteen and FIFTY years of age, and cover may be continued to the age of fifty-five so long as the annual premium is paid. So a person of sixty cannot join, and an existing member's cover ends at fifty-five. The words "all adults above the age group of 18 years" describe an open-ended scheme, and this one is not open-ended at either the joining stage or the continuation stage. The upper limits are not arbitrary: life cover becomes dearer as age rises, and a flat premium with no medical underwriting can only be offered within a band where the risk is broadly uniform.
STATEMENT 3 — "The life insurance worth is decided by the account holder and he has to pay the annual premium accordingly." FALSE, and it inverts the scheme's central design. The sum assured is FIXED at ₹ 2 lakh for every member, and the annual premium is a single standard figure for every member — ₹ 330 at the launch of the scheme, revised upward in 2022. There is no slab to choose, no proposal form to fill in with a desired cover, and no medical examination. Uniformity is the point: a product with one price and one benefit can be sold across a counter by bank staff to millions of people who have never bought insurance, which is exactly what the scheme set out to do. Contrast the pension scheme of the same family, where the subscriber DOES choose among five pension slabs and the contribution follows the choice; a candidate who has learnt that scheme may carry the feature across to this one, which is the trap statement 3 is built on.
So the true statements are 2 and 4, and the answer is option (c).
The phrase 'auto debit facility' is printed in single quotation marks in statement 2, the four statements each end in a full stop, and the question sentence follows the list with no codes line — all as the booklet sets them.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)1 and 3 only — This option is wrong twice over, since both the statements it names are false. The scheme is not open to all adults above eighteen: entry is confined to those between eighteen and fifty who hold a savings bank account, and cover ends at fifty-five. And the sum assured is not chosen by the account holder: it is fixed at ₹ 2 lakh for everyone, with a single standard annual premium. A candidate who takes this option has read the scheme as an ordinary life policy sold through a bank — open to anyone who wants it, in whatever amount he can afford — which is precisely what it is not. Its whole purpose was to reach people who had never bought insurance, and that required a product with no choices in it at all: one age band, one sum assured, one premium, no medical underwriting and no paperwork beyond a consent to auto-debit.
- (b)1 and 4 only — This option keeps the true statement 4 — the sum assured is paid to the family on the subscriber's death — and pairs it with the false statement about eligibility. The failure is the upper age limit. Entry is confined to savings bank account holders aged between eighteen and fifty, and existing cover runs only to fifty-five, so the scheme is bounded at the top as well as at the bottom. It is worth noticing that this is the parameter most often tested across the whole family of schemes launched together, because the three have DIFFERENT bands: eighteen to forty for the pension scheme, eighteen to fifty for this life cover, and eighteen to seventy for the accident cover. Learning them side by side makes each of them hard to mistake; learning them one at a time makes all three easy to confuse, which is what an option like this relies on.
- (d)2 and 3 only — This option keeps the true statement about auto-debit and pairs it with the false statement about the subscriber choosing his own cover. The sum assured under this scheme is a fixed ₹ 2 lakh and the premium a single standard figure, the same for a member of nineteen and a member of forty-nine; there is no selection of a slab and no premium calculated to a chosen amount. The confusion is an understandable one, because the PENSION scheme launched at the same time works exactly that way — the subscriber chooses a monthly pension between ₹ 1,000 and ₹ 5,000 and the contribution is set to deliver it — and the three schemes are so often described together that a feature migrates easily from one to another. The rule to hold is that the two INSURANCE schemes of the family are flat: one cover, one premium, no choices. Only the pension scheme offers slabs.
Concept
THE PRADHAN MANTRI JEEVAN JYOTI BIMA YOJANA IS A FLAT-RATE TERM LIFE COVER delivered through the banking system, and every detail of it follows from the problem it was designed to solve — how to sell life insurance to people who have never bought any.
THE DESIGN CHOICES, and why each was made:
ONE SUM ASSURED, ₹ 2 lakh for everybody. Nothing to decide, nothing to explain. ONE PREMIUM, the same for every member regardless of age within the band. This is only possible because the band is narrow; a flat premium across all ages would be unworkable. NO MEDICAL UNDERWRITING, so no proposal to be assessed and no delay. AUTO-DEBIT from the savings account, so the policy cannot lapse through forgetfulness. AN ANNUAL CONTRACT running from the first of June, renewed each year by the debit rather than by a fresh application. DEATH FROM ANY CAUSE, so there is no argument at the claim stage about how the member died.
WHERE IT SITS IN THE FAMILY. Three schemes were launched together and are best learnt as a table:
JEEVAN JYOTI BIMA YOJANA — LIFE cover. Entry 18 to 50, cover to 55. ₹ 2 lakh on death from any cause. Underwritten by life insurers. SURAKSHA BIMA YOJANA — ACCIDENT cover. Entry 18 to 70. ₹ 2 lakh on accidental death or total permanent disablement, ₹ 1 lakh on partial permanent disablement. Underwritten by general insurers. ATAL PENSION YOJANA — OLD AGE. Entry 18 to 40, pension from 60, a guaranteed monthly pension chosen from five slabs between ₹ 1,000 and ₹ 5,000, regulated by the pension authority.
Read across that table and the differences are systematic rather than arbitrary. The accident cover takes the widest age band because accidental death is rare at every age; the life cover takes a narrower one because mortality rises with age; the pension takes the narrowest of all because a minimum contribution period of twenty years must fit before the vesting age of sixty. The two insurance schemes are flat-rate and choice-free; the pension scheme alone offers slabs, because a pension has to be sized to what a person can afford to contribute over decades.
TERM INSURANCE AS A CONCEPT deserves a note, since it is what statement 4 describes. A term policy pays the sum assured only if the insured dies within the term; it builds no cash value and returns nothing on survival. That is why it is the cheapest form of life cover and the right form for a scheme aiming at wide coverage on a tiny premium. An endowment or a money-back policy, which pays on maturity as well as on death, is a savings instrument with insurance attached and costs many times as much for the same cover.
A CHANGE SINCE THIS PAPER WAS SET: the annual premiums of both insurance schemes were revised upward in 2022, while the sums assured and the age bands were left as they were.
This is the third of the three items on this paper dealing with the schemes launched under a common social-security umbrella, and it is set in the same shape as the second: four statements about one scheme, two true and two false, with the options arranged so that each pairs one statement from the first half of the list with one from the second.
That arrangement is the item's most useful feature for a candidate under time pressure. Four statements would ordinarily require four judgements; this option list requires two. A candidate who is certain only that the premium is taken by auto-debit — which is the most widely known fact about the whole family of schemes — has already removed half the list, and needs then to decide only between the fixed-cover statement and the payment-to-the-family statement.
The two falsehoods are of different kinds and are worth distinguishing. Statement 1 fails on a NUMBER: the scheme has an upper age limit and the statement implies none. Statement 3 fails on a PRINCIPLE: it attributes to this scheme a feature — a cover chosen by the subscriber — that belongs to the pension scheme of the same family and contradicts the flat-rate design that makes this one work. Errors of the first kind are corrected by memorising a table; errors of the second kind are corrected by understanding why the schemes are built as they are, which is more durable.
The habit worth building is comparative. Hold the three schemes in one table with a row for each parameter — contingency, entry ages, exit age, benefit, premium, administering body — and every question of this type answers itself. Held separately, the three are so similar in delivery and so different in detail that features migrate between them, which is exactly what the wrong options here depend on.
Key facts
- The Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana is a one-year term life cover, renewable annually, paying ₹ 2 lakh on the death of the member from ANY cause.
- Entry is open to savings bank account holders aged 18 to 50, and cover may be continued to the age of 55 so long as the annual premium is paid.
- The sum assured is fixed for every member and the annual premium is a single standard figure — ₹ 330 at launch, revised upward in 2022 — so the subscriber chooses neither.
- There is no medical underwriting, which is what allows the scheme to be sold across a bank counter without a proposal or an examination.
- The premium is taken by auto-debit from the savings bank account before the cover year begins, which removes the lapse risk that kills small policies.
- The sum assured is payable to the nominee on death during the cover period; being term insurance, it builds no cash value and returns nothing on survival.
- Its sibling, the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana, is the accident cover of the family, with entry from 18 to 70 and payment only on accidental death or permanent disablement.
- The Atal Pension Yojana, the third member of the family, is the only one that offers the subscriber a choice of slabs — five pension levels between ₹ 1,000 and ₹ 5,000 a month.
- The three age bands differ systematically: 18 to 40 for the pension, 18 to 50 for the life cover and 18 to 70 for the accident cover.
- Term insurance is the cheapest form of life cover because it pays only on death within the term, unlike an endowment policy which also pays on maturity.
Study next
Common traps
- Reading the scheme as open to all adults over eighteen. Entry stops at fifty and cover ends at fifty-five.
- Importing the pension scheme's choice of slabs into this one. The two insurance schemes of the family are flat-rate, with one sum assured and one premium.
- Confusing the life cover with the accident cover. This scheme pays on death from any cause; its sibling pays only where an accident is the cause.
- Answering the premium from today's figure. Both insurance premiums were revised in 2022, though the sums assured and age bands were not.
- Treating the cover as a policy that runs for life once taken. It is an annual contract renewed each year by the auto-debit.
- Judging all four statements separately when the option list pairs one from each half, so that two decisions settle the question.
The flagship social-security schemes are examined on every EPFO paper, and the questions are parameter questions dressed as statement lists. Expect to be asked for an age band, a sum assured, a premium, a contingency, or the body that administers or regulates a scheme — and expect two or three of those to be tested in a single item.
The two devices that recur are the wrong NUMBER, where a real figure from the family is attached to the wrong scheme, and the wrong FEATURE, where a genuine characteristic of one scheme is stated of another. Statement 1 here is the first kind and statement 3 the second. Both are defeated by comparative learning: a single table of the three schemes, read across rather than down.
It is also worth reading the option list for structure before recalling anything. When the options pair one statement from each half of the list, the item is two smaller questions and either half is worth answering first. When three options share a statement and one does not, the setter has told you which statement decides the item. Neither observation requires any knowledge of the subject, and both save time that is better spent on the parts of the paper where knowledge is the only route through.
Related PYQs
EPFO_APFC_2016_Q102Consider the following statements regarding the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana : 1. It is applicable for all bank account holders up to the age of 60 years. 2. It is a life insurance cover. 3. It is an accident insurance cover. 4. The insurance covers death and permanent disability due to accident. Which of the above statements are correct ?
- (a) 1 and 2 only
- (b) 3 and 4 only
- (c) 2 and 3 only
- (d) 1 and 4 only
Answer(b) 3 and 4 only
The Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana on this same paper — the accident cover of the family, set in the same four-statement shape and turning again on the age band and the nature of the cover.
EPFO_APFC_2016_Q100Consider the following statements in respect of Atal Pension Yojana : 1. Beneficiary must be in the age group of 18 to 40 years. 2. Beneficiary will receive the pension only after he attains the age of 60 years. 3. After the death of a beneficiary, his spouse continues to receive the pension. 4. No nominee of the beneficiary is permitted. Which of the above statements are correct ?
- (a) 3 and 4 only
- (b) 1, 3 and 4 only
- (c) 1, 2 and 3 only
- (d) 1, 2, 3 and 4
Answer(c) 1, 2 and 3 only
The Atal Pension Yojana on this paper, the third scheme of the group and the only one in which the subscriber chooses his own benefit slab.
EPFO_APFC_2016_Q92Which of the following are the instruments of providing social security in India ? 1. Income Tax 2. Employees' Provident Fund 3. General Sales Tax 4. LIC 5. National Pension Scheme 6. Postal Provident Fund Select the correct answer using the codes given below :
- (a) 1, 2, 3 and 4
- (b) 2, 3, 4 and 5
- (c) 2, 4, 5 and 6
- (d) 3, 4, 5 and 6
Answer(c) 2, 4, 5 and 6
The instruments of social security in India on this paper, which places life insurance among them and explains why a term cover counts as one.
Practice
- practice — not a real PYQ
What is the sum assured payable under the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana on the death of the subscriber during the period of cover ?
- (a)₹ 1 lakh
- (b)₹ 2 lakh
- (c)₹ 5 lakh
- (d)An amount chosen by the subscriber at the time of joining
Answer(b) ₹ 2 lakh — the cover is a flat sum assured, the same for every member, and it is payable to the nominee on death from any cause during the cover year. The last option describes the pension scheme of the same family, where slabs are chosen, not this one.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Up to what age may cover under the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana be continued by an existing member, subject to payment of the annual premium ?
- (a)50 years
- (b)55 years
- (c)60 years
- (d)70 years
Answer(b) 55 years — entry to the scheme closes at fifty and cover runs to fifty-five. Fifty is the highest age of ENTRY, sixty is the vesting age of the pension scheme, and seventy is the upper limit of the accident cover of the same family.