EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 120 of 120

Correct — C, (c) Both 1 and 2. Both statements about the 2023 Santosh Trophy are accurate, and the item works because the first of them sounds as though it cannot be. Statement 1 says the final was played in Riyadh, and it was: the semi-finals and the final of the 2022-23 edition, the seventy-sixth in the competition's history, were staged at the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This was the first time the closing rounds of India's national inter-state football championship had been held outside the country, and the arrangement drew attention precisely because it was unprecedented — a domestic championship, contested by state associations, decided abroad. A candidate who has never heard of the arrangement will read the statement as obviously wrong, which is the whole design of the question. Statement 2 says the final was played between Karnataka and Meghalaya, and that is correct too. Karnataka beat Meghalaya three goals to two on 4 March 2023 to take the title, which was the state's first since the 1968-69 season, ending a wait of fifty-four years. For Meghalaya it was a first appearance in the final, and the pairing was itself notable because neither state belongs to the small group that has historically dominated the competition. Since both statements are correct, the code that says so is option (c). Some background makes the item easier to place. The Santosh Trophy is the National Football Championship for men's teams representing the state football associations and other units affiliated to the All India Football Federation, which organises it. It was first held in 1941 and is named after the Maharaja of Santosh, then president of the Indian Football Association, which donated the trophy. West Bengal is by a wide margin the most successful team in its history, and Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Services have all won it repeatedly, so a final between Karnataka and Meghalaya was an unusual one on that count as well. The competition has continued since: West Bengal beat Kerala one-nil in the final of the 2024-25 edition. As with every current-affairs item, the year in the stem fixes what is being asked, and the correct answer to this question does not change when a later edition is played.

• (a)1 only — Accepting the venue while rejecting the finalists means believing that the final was played in Riyadh but between some other pair of teams, which is an awkward position to hold: a candidate who knows the unusual fact about the venue has almost certainly encountered the coverage that also named the teams. The likeliest reason for rejecting statement 2 is an expectation drawn from the competition's history. West Bengal is by far its most successful team, and Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Services have all won it several times, so a candidate reasoning from the roll of honour rather than from the particular year will expect one of those names in the final and reject a pairing of Karnataka and Meghalaya as implausible. It was in fact Karnataka's first title since the 1968-69 season and Meghalaya's first appearance in a final, which is exactly why the edition was reported as it was.
• (b)2 only — This is the likeliest wrong answer. Accepting the finalists while rejecting the venue is what a candidate does who has read that Karnataka won the Santosh Trophy in 2023 but cannot believe that an Indian domestic championship would be decided in Saudi Arabia. The disbelief is understandable and it is wrong. The semi-finals and the final of the 2022-23 edition were played at the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, the first time the competition's closing rounds were held outside India. The general lesson matters more than this particular fact: in a statement-set current-affairs item, a statement that sounds implausible is often included because it is true and surprising, since an examiner gets no discrimination from a statement everybody can evaluate from general knowledge. Implausibility is not evidence of falsity, and where a candidate has no information either way, the safer inference is that an unusual claim has been selected for being unusual.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Rejecting both statements is the choice of a candidate with no information about the edition at all, reasoning that a question this specific must be built around at least one error and that the two least likely-sounding elements — a domestic final abroad and a pairing of two states not associated with the competition — are the errors. Both are in fact correct: the final was played at the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh on 4 March 2023 and Karnataka beat Meghalaya three goals to two. It is worth noting how this option relates to the way these items are built. A two-statement question is set in all four configurations, and 'neither' is used no less often than the others, so choosing it as a default when nothing is known is not a strategy — it is a guess with the same expected value as any other, made worse here by the negative marking that applies to every question on this paper.

The Santosh Trophy is the National Football Championship for men in India, contested by teams representing the state football associations and other affiliated units rather than by clubs. It was first held in 1941 and is organised by the All India Football Federation; the trophy itself was donated by the Indian Football Association of Bengal and is named after the Maharaja of Santosh, who was then its president. For much of the twentieth century it was the most important football competition in the country and the principal route into the national team, and West Bengal has been much its most successful competitor, with Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Services also winning it repeatedly. Its relative standing changed as club football was professionalised — first through the National Football League and later the I-League and the Indian Super League — so that the tournament now sits alongside a club structure rather than above it, and its qualifying rounds are spread across zones before a final round decides the title. The 2022-23 edition was the seventy-sixth, and its semi-finals and final were played at the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, the first time the competition's closing rounds had been staged outside India. Karnataka beat Meghalaya three goals to two in the final on 4 March 2023, taking the title for the first time since 1968-69, while Meghalaya reached a final for the first time. The competition has continued in the usual way since, with West Bengal beating Kerala one-nil in the final of the 2024-25 edition.

This is the last numbered item in the booklet, and the notes record that its page still prints the instruction to turn over although nothing follows it. Sports questions appear in the current-affairs close of these papers for the same reason Nobel Prizes and business terms do: they are events with a fixed date, a clear result and a small number of testable details, so they can be set without ambiguity and answered without argument. What distinguishes this one is that its difficulty is entirely psychological. Neither statement requires any specialist knowledge of football; both are facts that any regular reader of a newspaper in early 2023 would have seen. The examiner's lever is that one of the facts is surprising, and a candidate who does not know it is likely to reject it for that reason alone. That is a general trap in statement-set current-affairs items, and it is worth naming explicitly: an examiner chooses statements that discriminate between candidates who followed the news and candidates who did not, which means the statements will often be the ones that could not be guessed. The item also carries this booklet's most-used option set, the code with one only, two only, both and neither, which appears on eleven of its questions. On the last question of a paper, with time short, the temptation to answer from plausibility rather than from knowledge is at its strongest, and the negative marking that applies to every question here makes a considered omission a reasonable alternative to a guess.

• The semi-finals and final of the 2022-23 Santosh Trophy, the seventy-sixth edition, were played at the King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — the first time the closing rounds of India's national inter-state football championship had been staged outside the country. Both statements in this item are correct, which is why the answer is the code accepting both.
• Karnataka beat Meghalaya three goals to two in the final on 4 March 2023. It was Karnataka's first Santosh Trophy title since the 1968-69 season, a gap of fifty-four years, and Meghalaya's first appearance in the final of the competition.
• The Santosh Trophy is the National Football Championship for men's teams representing state football associations and other affiliated units, organised by the All India Football Federation and first held in 1941. The trophy was donated by the Indian Football Association of Bengal and is named after the Maharaja of Santosh, then its president.
• West Bengal is by a wide margin the most successful team in the competition's history, with Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Services also multiple winners, which is why a final between Karnataka and Meghalaya was reported as an unusual one. West Bengal beat Kerala one-nil in the final of the 2024-25 edition.
• In a statement-set current-affairs item, an implausible-sounding statement is often included because it is true and surprising. An examiner gains no discrimination from a statement every candidate can evaluate from general knowledge, so improbability is not evidence of falsity and should not be treated as a reason to reject a statement.

• Rejecting a statement because it sounds improbable. The final of an Indian domestic championship being played in Riyadh is exactly the kind of surprising fact an examiner selects, because a statement that can be evaluated from general knowledge discriminates between nobody.
• Reasoning from a competition's roll of honour rather than from the year asked about. West Bengal, Kerala, Punjab, Goa and Services have dominated the Santosh Trophy historically, but the 2023 final was contested by Karnataka and Meghalaya.
• Defaulting to the code that rejects both statements when nothing is known. Two-statement items are set in all four configurations, so that choice is a guess rather than a strategy, and on this paper every wrong answer carries a deduction.
• Confusing the edition with the calendar year. The tournament ran across the 2022-23 season and the final was played in March 2023, which is why the stem refers to the Santosh Trophy Tournament, 2023 while the edition is numbered against the season.

Sports items in the current-affairs section stay close to a fixed template: a recent championship, its winner, its runner-up, its venue and any first or record attached to the edition. They are set either as a straight one-line question — who won, where was it held, who hosted — or, as here, as a pair of statements with the four-option code, in which case the statements are chosen from the surprising details rather than the obvious ones. Occasionally the question runs the other way and asks which sport a named trophy belongs to, or after whom it is named, which rewards knowing the origins of the major Indian trophies. Preparation is a log rather than a subject: for each major event in the twelve to eighteen months before the examination, record the winner, the runner-up, the venue, the margin and anything unusual about the edition. That last field is the one these questions are drawn from most often, because it is what distinguishes a candidate who followed the event from one who merely knows the sport.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The teams that contest the Santosh Trophy represent which one of the following?

  • (a)Clubs playing in the Indian Super League
  • (b)State football associations and other units affiliated to the All India Football Federation
  • (c)Universities affiliated to the Association of Indian Universities
  • (d)The zonal railways and other public sector undertakings

  Answer(b) State football associations and other units affiliated to the All India Football Federation — the Santosh Trophy is the national inter-state championship, contested by teams representing states and affiliated units such as Services, and not by clubs. Club football in India is played in the Indian Super League and the I-League, which are separate competitions with a separate calendar.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Santosh Trophy, first held in 1941, is organised by which one of the following bodies?

  • (a)Sports Authority of India
  • (b)All India Football Federation
  • (c)Indian Olympic Association
  • (d)Indian Football Association, West Bengal

  Answer(b) All India Football Federation — the Federation is the national governing body for the sport and organises the championship. The last option is the tempting one and is worth knowing about: the Indian Football Association of Bengal donated the trophy, which is named after the Maharaja of Santosh, then its president, but the competition itself is run by the national federation.