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.

Startup Hubs are agreed to be set up in 1. IIITs 2. IISERs 3. NITs 4. Central Universities Select the correct answer using the code given below.

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

Answer

Why

Correct — A, (a) 1, 2 and 3. The agreement in question was between the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Department of Science and Technology, announced with the Startup India Action Plan of 16 January 2016, to set up more than seventy-five start-up support hubs in the country's national institutions. The four categories named were the National Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Information Technology, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, and the National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research.

Taking the paper's four numbered items against that list:

Statement 1, IIITs — correct. The Indian Institutes of Information Technology are among the four categories.

Statement 2, IISERs — correct. The Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research are among them.

Statement 3, NITs — correct. The National Institutes of Technology are among them, and are the largest of the four groups.

Statement 4, Central Universities — incorrect. The fourth category in the agreement was the NIPERs, the pharmaceutical education and research institutes. Central Universities were not part of this particular arrangement.

So the answer is 1, 2 and 3, which is option (a).

The logic behind the selection is worth seeing, because it makes the answer reconstructable. All four categories in the agreement are centrally funded, nationally networked technical or scientific institutions: engineering and technology, information technology, science education and research, and pharmaceutical research. A start-up support hub needs laboratories, workshops, faculty with technology expertise and students working on technical problems, and it needs a network of similar institutions so that one hub can serve several campuses. Central Universities are the general-degree family — arts, science, commerce, social sciences — with a very different footprint, and they were not the target of a technology-incubation programme. The examiner has put the most familiar of all higher-education categories in the fourth slot precisely because a candidate who remembers 'four kinds of institution' but cannot recall NIPER will fill the gap with the name that first comes to mind.

This item pairs naturally with question 46 of the same paper. The National Student Startup Policy is the campus-level policy from the technical-education regulator; the Startup Hubs are the physical infrastructure agreed between two ministries. Both belong to the same push that began with the Startup India Action Plan in January 2016.

Why the others are wrong

(b)1 and 4 only — This code keeps only the IIITs from the correct list and adds Central Universities, dropping both the NITs and the IISERs. Dropping the NITs is particularly hard to defend: they are the largest network of centrally funded technical institutions in the country and the obvious first choice for any campus-level technology programme. The code's only attraction is that it is short, and a candidate uncertain of the whole list may prefer a short code on the reasoning that a narrower claim is safer — which is not how these codes work, since the question asks for everything that is true.
(c)3 and 4 only — This takes the NITs, which belong, together with Central Universities, which do not, and discards the IIITs and IISERs. It is the code for a candidate who recognises only the single most famous name on the list and pairs it with the most familiar category of university. Note that it drops the IIITs, which are the institutions most obviously suited to a technology start-up hub of all four — a good check that the reasoning behind this code has not been done.
(d)1, 3 and 4 — This is the most tempting wrong code. It keeps the two categories a candidate is most likely to associate with engineering entrepreneurship, the IIITs and the NITs, and then swaps out the IISERs for Central Universities. The swap is understandable — the IISERs are science education and research institutes, known for pure science and doctoral work rather than for commercial ventures, so they feel like the odd one out, while Central Universities feel like an obvious inclusion in any national education programme. But the agreement was drawn along the line of centrally funded technical and scientific institution networks, and the IISERs sit inside that line while Central Universities sit outside it. The fourth member of the group, absent from this paper's list, was the NIPERs.

Concept

The Startup India Action Plan was launched on 16 January 2016 and organised its measures under three heads: simplification and handholding, funding support and incentives, and industry-academia partnership and incubation. The third head is where the campus programmes sit, and it produced a set of institution-level interventions — research parks modelled on the one at IIT Madras, incubators and technology business incubators, innovation and entrepreneurship centres, and the agreement between the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Department of Science and Technology to set up more than seventy-five start-up support hubs in the NITs, IIITs, IISERs and NIPERs. Around the same push sit the Atal Innovation Mission, with its tinkering laboratories in schools and incubation centres, and, later in 2016, the National Student Startup Policy formulated by the All India Council for Technical Education, which asks technical institutions to give entrepreneurial activity a place in the academic system itself. What unites them is the assumption that the binding constraint on technology start-ups in India is not ideas but the machinery around them — laboratory access, mentoring, early money and the willingness of an institution to let a student build something instead of only studying it.

This is a scheme question in statement-list form, and the format is doing real work: it tests four eligibility boundaries at once and gives away nothing about how many of them are true. The reliable technique on such items is to try to reconstruct the principle behind the list rather than to recall the list itself. Here the principle is 'centrally funded technical and scientific institution networks', and once a candidate states it, Central Universities fall away and the answer follows. For an Enforcement Officer the underlying habit matters more than the fact: eligibility lists in government schemes are almost always drawn along a stated principle, and finding the principle is faster and more reliable than memorising the enumeration.

Key facts

The Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Department of Science and Technology agreed to set up more than seventy-five start-up support hubs.
The institution categories covered were NITs, IIITs, IISERs and NIPERs.
Central Universities were not part of this agreement.
NIPER stands for National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research.
IISER stands for Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.
The agreement was announced with the Startup India Action Plan, launched on 16 January 2016.
The Action Plan was organised under three heads: simplification and handholding, funding support and incentives, and industry-academia partnership and incubation.
The related campus measures include research parks, technology business incubators and innovation and entrepreneurship centres.
The National Student Startup Policy, formulated by AICTE and launched in November 2016, is the campus-policy counterpart to this infrastructure.

Reconstruct the principle behind the list rather than trying to recall the list

The agreement→Between the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Department of Science and Technology, announced with the Startup India Action Plan of 16 January 2016, to set up more than seventy-five start-up support hubs. The four categories named were the NITs, the IIITs, the IISERs and the NIPERs.

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are all in→The Indian Institutes of Information Technology; the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research; and the National Institutes of Technology, which are the largest of the four groups.

Statement 4, Central Universities — out→The fourth category in the agreement was the NIPERs, the National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research. The examiner has put the most familiar of all higher-education categories in the fourth slot precisely because a candidate who remembers 'four kinds of institution' but cannot recall NIPER will fill the gap with the name that first comes to mind.

The principle that makes it reconstructable→All four categories in the agreement are centrally funded, nationally networked technical or scientific institutions. A hub needs laboratories, workshops, faculty with technology expertise and students working on technical problems, and a network so that one hub can serve several campuses. Central Universities are the general-degree family, with a very different footprint.

(d) 1, 3 and 4 — the most tempting code→It keeps the two categories a candidate most associates with engineering entrepreneurship and swaps the IISERs out for Central Universities. The swap is understandable, since the IISERs are known for pure science and doctoral work rather than commercial ventures — but they sit inside the line the agreement was drawn along, and Central Universities sit outside it.

Where this sits in the programme→The Action Plan was organised under three heads — simplification and handholding, funding support and incentives, and industry-academia partnership and incubation — and the campus measures belong to the third: research parks, technology business incubators, innovation and entrepreneurship centres, and these hubs.

Study next

The Startup India Action Plan — its nineteen action points and the tax and compliance concessions it createdAtal Innovation Mission — Atal Tinkering Labs, Atal Incubation Centres and the Atal New India ChallengesHow a startup is defined for the purposes of recognition, and what recognition entitles a firm toThe Fund of Funds for Startups and how it invests through alternative investment fundsThe families of centrally funded institutions — IITs, NITs, IIITs, IISERs, NIPERs, IIMs — and what each was created for

Common traps

Filling a half-remembered list with the most familiar category rather than the correct one; here Central Universities displace the NIPERs.
Assuming a national education programme must include Central Universities.
Excluding the IISERs because they are associated with pure science rather than commerce.
Preferring a shorter code because it feels safer; these codes are graded on completeness, not caution.
Confusing the Startup India Action Plan with the Stand Up India scheme — the first is a policy programme launched in January 2016, the second a bank-credit scheme launched that April.

The 2016 entrepreneurship push generated several EPFO items, and they cluster: which body formulated a policy, which institutions were covered, which sectors qualify, what the loan band is. Preparing the whole push as one map — Startup India in January 2016, Stand Up India in April 2016, the National Student Startup Policy in November 2016, and the institutional infrastructure agreed alongside them — answers all of them and fixes the dates against one another.

Related PYQs

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q46Open & attempt →

Which one of the following bodies has formulated the ‘National Student Startup Policy’, launched by the President of India in November 2016?

(a) UGC
(b) NCERT
(c) AIU
(d) AICTE

Answer(d) AICTE

The campus-policy counterpart of the same push, eight questions earlier in this paper — which body formulated the National Student Startup Policy launched in November 2016.

EPFO_EOAO_2017_Q51Open & attempt →

A StandUp enterprise can be established in 1. farming sector 2. manufacturing sector 3. service sector 4. trading sector Select the correct answer using the code given below.

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

Answer(d) 2, 3 and 4

The credit side of the same 2016 programme — which sectors a StandUp enterprise may be established in.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Startup India Action Plan was launched in
- (a)January 2016
- (b)April 2016
- (c)August 2016
- (d)November 2016
Answer(a) January 2016
practice — not a real PYQ
NIPER, one of the categories of institution covered by the Startup Hubs agreement, stands for
- (a)National Institute of Public Education and Research
- (b)National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research
- (c)National Institute of Petroleum Engineering and Refining
- (d)National Institute of Physical Education and Recreation
Answer(b) National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research

Why