Enforcement Officer / Accounts Officer (EO/AO) 2017 recruitment test. Transcribed from the Commission's own booklet (series A, GRS-A-TNS); answer as per the official UPSC final answer key. This question is in Part B. Answer last reviewed 24 August 2026.

Who among the following were conferred with Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award for the year 2016? 1. Jitu Rai 2. Dipa Karmakar 3. P. V. Sindhu 4. Sakshi Malik Select the correct answer using the code given below.

(a)2 and 3 only
(b)2, 3 and 4 only
(c)1 and 4 only
(d)1, 2, 3 and 4

Answer

Why

Correct — D, (d) 1, 2, 3 and 4. All four names in the list were conferred the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award for the year 2016, which is why the only code that takes every statement is the right one. Taking them in the order printed: Statement 1, Jitu Rai — correct. He is a shooter, whose international record includes a gold medal in the pistol event at the 2014 Asian Games, and he was among the four honoured for 2016. Statement 2, Dipa Karmakar — correct. She is a gymnast, the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for the Olympic Games, and she finished fourth in the vault final at Rio in 2016, missing a medal by a fraction. Statement 3, P. V. Sindhu — correct. She won the silver medal in badminton women's singles at Rio in 2016. Statement 4, Sakshi Malik — correct. She won the bronze medal in the 58 kg freestyle wrestling event at Rio in 2016, the first Indian woman wrestler to win an Olympic medal. Four sportspersons receiving the award for a single year is an unusually large group, and that fact is itself the key to the item. A candidate who assumes the honour goes to one or two people a year will look for a way to shorten the list and will find three plausible ways of doing it in options (a), (b) and (c). The correct approach on a list where every name is individually well known is to check each one rather than to look for the shape of a plausible subset. The award is India's highest sporting honour, instituted in 1991-92 and first conferred on the chess player Viswanathan Anand. It is given for the most spectacular and outstanding performance by a sportsperson over a period, and it is presented by the President of India. Since this paper was set, the honour has been renamed: in August 2021 the Government renamed it the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, after the hockey player. The recipients for 2016 are unaffected by the renaming, and a candidate meeting this question today should hold both names for the same award.

Why the others are wrong

(a)2 and 3 only — This code takes only Dipa Karmakar and P. V. Sindhu. Both were indeed conferred the award, so the statements it includes are true; what makes the code wrong is what it leaves out — Jitu Rai and Sakshi Malik were honoured for the same year. The pairing suggests a candidate recalling the two performances from Rio that dominated the coverage as feats of near-miss and breakthrough, and stopping there. On a 'which of the following' list, an option that contains only true statements can still be the wrong answer, because the question asks for all of them.
(b)2, 3 and 4 only — This is the most tempting wrong code on the list. It takes the three women — Dipa Karmakar, P. V. Sindhu and Sakshi Malik — and drops Jitu Rai, and it is tempting precisely because 2016 was narrated in the Indian press as the year of the country's women at the Olympic Games: a badminton silver, a wrestling bronze and a fourth place in gymnastics, with no medal from the men's contingent. A candidate reconstructing the award list from that story will build exactly this set. But the Khel Ratna is not awarded on the basis of a single Games, and Jitu Rai, a shooter with a substantial record in Asian and Commonwealth competition, was among the four conferred for the year.
(c)1 and 4 only — This code takes only Jitu Rai and Sakshi Malik. Both statements are true individually, but the pair has no narrative or logic behind it — one shooter and one wrestler, with a badminton silver medallist and an Olympic gymnast excluded. It is the code an examiner includes to complete the arithmetic of the option set rather than to catch a specific misconception, and a candidate who has verified even one of the excluded names can discard it at once.

Concept

India's national sports awards form a small, examinable family. The Khel Ratna is the highest of them, instituted in 1991-92 and first conferred on Viswanathan Anand, and it recognises the most spectacular and outstanding performance by a sportsperson. The Arjuna Award recognises consistently outstanding performance over a period of years. The Dronacharya Award goes to coaches who have produced medal winners. The Dhyan Chand Award recognises lifetime contribution to sport, and the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar recognises organisations that promote sport. The awards are conferred by the President of India at a ceremony in Rashtrapati Bhavan, on the recommendation of a selection committee under the sports ministry. For the year 2016 the Khel Ratna went to four sportspersons — Jitu Rai in shooting, Dipa Karmakar in gymnastics, P. V. Sindhu in badminton and Sakshi Malik in wrestling — a larger group than the award usually goes to in a single year. The honour was renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in August 2021, so material published before and after that date uses two different names for the same award; questions set on years up to 2020 will use the older name, as this paper does.

Sports awards are a standing EPFO current-affairs item because they are dateable, finite and easy to set. This particular question is harder than it looks: it is not enough to recognise the names, since all four are famous, and the candidate has to know the exact composition of one year's list. The examiner has made that the whole difficulty by choosing a year with an unusually long list, so that every shortened option looks reasonable. The general lesson for statement-list current-affairs items is that a code containing only true statements is not automatically correct — the code has to contain all the true ones.

Key facts

The Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award for the year 2016 went to four sportspersons.
They were Jitu Rai (shooting), Dipa Karmakar (gymnastics), P. V. Sindhu (badminton) and Sakshi Malik (wrestling).
P. V. Sindhu won the badminton women's singles silver medal at the Rio Olympic Games in 2016.
Sakshi Malik won the bronze medal in 58 kg freestyle wrestling at Rio in 2016, the first Indian woman wrestler to win an Olympic medal.
Dipa Karmakar was the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for the Olympic Games and finished fourth in the vault final at Rio.
Jitu Rai is a shooter whose record includes a gold medal in the pistol event at the 2014 Asian Games.
The Khel Ratna was instituted in 1991-92 and first conferred on Viswanathan Anand.
It is India's highest sporting honour and is presented by the President of India.
The award was renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in August 2021.
The Arjuna Award is for consistent performance over years, the Dronacharya Award for coaches and the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement.

Every name on the list is true, so the only defence is checking each one

All four were conferred for 2016→Jitu Rai in shooting, Dipa Karmakar in gymnastics, P. V. Sindhu in badminton and Sakshi Malik in wrestling. Four sportspersons receiving the award for a single year is an unusually large group, and that fact is itself the key to the item.

What each had done→Sindhu won the badminton women's singles silver at Rio in 2016; Sakshi Malik the bronze in 58 kg freestyle wrestling, the first Indian woman wrestler to win an Olympic medal; Dipa Karmakar was the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for the Games and finished fourth in the vault final; Jitu Rai is a shooter whose record includes a gold in the pistol event at the 2014 Asian Games.

(b) 2, 3 and 4 only — the most tempting→It takes the three women and drops Jitu Rai, and it tempts precisely because 2016 was narrated in the Indian press as the year of the country's women at the Olympic Games. But the Khel Ratna is not awarded on the basis of a single Games.

(a) 2 and 3 only→A candidate recalling the two Rio performances that dominated the coverage — the near-miss and the breakthrough — and stopping there. On a 'which of the following' list an option that contains only true statements can still be the wrong answer, because the question asks for all of them.

(c) 1 and 4 only→One shooter and one wrestler, with a badminton silver medallist and an Olympic gymnast excluded, and no narrative behind the pairing. It completes the arithmetic of the option set, and can be discarded the moment one excluded name is verified.

The award, and its later name→India's highest sporting honour, instituted in 1991-92 and first conferred on the chess player Viswanathan Anand, presented by the President of India. It was renamed the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in August 2021, so the same award carries two names depending on the year being written about.

Study next

India's national sports awards — what each recognises and who selects the recipientsIndia's Olympic medal record, Games by Games, and the individual medallistsThe Target Olympic Podium Scheme and the Khelo India programmeParalympic medallists of India and the awards conferred on themWhich sports bodies are national federations and how they relate to the Indian Olympic Association

Common traps

Assuming only one or two people receive the Khel Ratna in a year and looking for the shortest plausible list.
Rebuilding an award list from a single event; the Khel Ratna is not decided by one Olympic Games alone.
Marking a code because every statement in it is true, without checking whether a true statement has been left out.
Confusing the Khel Ratna with the Arjuna Award, which recognises sustained performance rather than a peak.
Using the post-2021 name of the award for a question that predates the renaming, or missing that the two names refer to the same honour.

Awards and honours appear in EPFO papers as a name-to-field item, a name-to-year item, or a statement list like this one. The most reliable preparation is a one-page table for the current and immediately preceding cycle — award, year, recipient, sport — refreshed each year, together with the institution's own history: when it was instituted, who received it first, and whether it has been renamed.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award was renamed in 2021 after which sportsperson?
- (a)Major Dhyan Chand
- (b)Milkha Singh
- (c)K. D. Jadhav
- (d)Dhanraj Pillay
Answer(a) Major Dhyan Chand
practice — not a real PYQ
Among the recipients of the Khel Ratna for the year 2016, who represented India in gymnastics at the Rio Olympic Games?
- (a)Sakshi Malik
- (b)Dipa Karmakar
- (c)P. V. Sindhu
- (d)Jitu Rai
Answer(b) Dipa Karmakar

Why