MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 50 of 100

Correct — option (3). Read the stem twice before anything else, because this is a negative question: it asks which statement is NOT correct, and nothing in the printing marks the word 'not' out. The three statements you can vouch for have to be left out of the answer, and the one that fails is what you are looking for. Statement (3) says AMRUT 'addresses the challenges of water supply in cities across the country', and it fails on coverage. AMRUT was launched in five hundred selected cities and towns, chosen against criteria that included population size and status as a heritage or riverside town, and not in the cities of the country at large; the great majority of India's statutory towns lay outside the mission altogether. The question contains its own proof of this, because statement (4) states the figure of five hundred cities, so a candidate who accepts statement (4) has already conceded that the mission's reach was selective and cannot then accept a statement that describes it as national in scope. There is a second and independent reason statement (3) is a poor description: water supply is one of the mission's thrust areas, not the whole of it. AMRUT was designed to build basic urban infrastructure across five heads — water supply, sewerage and septage management, storm water drainage, green spaces and parks, and non-motorised urban transport — with a set of urban reforms and capacity building attached, so a sentence that reduces the mission to its water component understates it even for the five hundred cities it did cover. That the coverage reading is the intended one is confirmed by what came afterwards: AMRUT 2.0, launched on 1 October 2021, was expressly extended to all statutory towns with the aim of universal coverage of water supply, which would have been unnecessary had the first mission already reached cities across the country. Statement (3) is therefore the incorrect statement and option (3) is the answer.

• (1)AMRUT is flagship mission of Government of India — This statement is correct, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking which statement is not correct. AMRUT is one of the central government's flagship urban missions and was launched alongside the Smart Cities Mission and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for urban areas as part of a single package of urban initiatives, with substantial central assistance committed to it over the mission period. A candidate may hesitate here because 'flagship' is an informal description rather than a defined term, and vague-sounding statements often feel like the planted error in a negative question. In this format the safer instinct runs the other way: a statement that is loosely worded but true is not the failure you are looking for, and the failure will usually be one that misstates a fact you can check, such as a number, a date or the extent of coverage.
• (2)It was launched by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs — This statement is treated as correct and is not the answer. AMRUT is a programme of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, which administers the mission, approves the State Annual Action Plans through which it operates and releases central assistance to the states. It is worth knowing, as a matter of administrative history rather than as a challenge to this option, that the ministry carried the name Ministry of Urban Development on the day of launch in June 2015 and acquired its present title when the urban development and housing ministries were brought together in 2017; the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is the successor department and the mission has been its responsibility throughout. In a negative question the object is to find the statement that fails, and the coverage claim in option (3) fails far more plainly than a statement that names the ministry which has always run the mission.
• (4)It was launched on 25th June, 2015 in 500 cities in the country — This statement is correct in both of its particulars and so cannot be the answer. AMRUT was launched on 25 June 2015, the same day as the Smart Cities Mission and the urban housing mission, and it covered five hundred selected cities and towns. Candidates lose marks here in a characteristic way: they know the date and the number are the sort of detail an examiner tampers with, they cannot recall them precisely, and they nominate this option on suspicion. That is the wrong instinct in a negative question, because a statement you cannot verify is not thereby false. It is also worth seeing that this option and option (3) cannot both be true — one says five hundred selected cities, the other says cities across the country — which is a strong hint that the pair contains the failure and that the question turns on deciding which of the two to trust.

AMRUT belongs to a generation of centrally sponsored urban missions launched in 2015 and is best understood by what distinguishes it from its neighbours. Where the Smart Cities Mission selected a smaller number of cities through a competition and funded area-based development and technology-led projects within them, AMRUT took a wider set of five hundred cities and funded the unglamorous basics of urban infrastructure: piped water supply, sewerage networks and septage management, storm water drains to reduce flooding, parks and green spaces, and facilities for walking and cycling. Its instrument was the State Annual Action Plan, under which each state consolidated the proposals of its cities into a single plan approved by the central ministry, so project selection sat with the states rather than with the Centre — a design intended to strengthen state and municipal capacity rather than to run projects from Delhi. A set of urban reforms and capacity building measures, including improvements in municipal accounting, e-governance and own-source revenue, was attached to the funding as an incentive. AMRUT 2.0, launched on 1 October 2021, extended the approach to all statutory towns with the declared objective of universal coverage of water supply and, in the AMRUT cities, of sewerage and septage management, together with a stronger emphasis on the recycling of treated water and the rejuvenation of urban water bodies.

Negative-sense questions are the most reliably mishandled family in this paper — seven questions carry a negation or exclusion, and unlike the 2024 paper the negating word is not printed in bold, so nothing on the page warns the reader. The procedure that survives this is mechanical: read the stem, note in the margin that you are hunting for the false statement, then mark each option true or false on its own before returning to the stem. Marks are lost here far more often by a candidate who knew all four facts and answered the opposite question than by one who did not know the scheme. This particular item rewards a second habit as well, which is looking for options that cannot both stand: statement (3) describes national coverage and statement (4) gives a figure of five hundred cities, and once you notice that they conflict you know the answer lies between them and can concentrate on deciding which is the reliable one. Urban missions are heavily examined in MPSC papers because Maharashtra is among the most urbanised large states and many of its cities were covered, so the launch year, the ministry, the coverage and the thrust areas of each mission are all fair game.

• AMRUT, the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, was launched on 25 June 2015 in five hundred selected cities and towns, and not in all the cities of the country.
• The mission's thrust areas are water supply, sewerage and septage management, storm water drainage, green spaces and parks, and non-motorised urban transport, with urban reforms and capacity building attached as additional components.
• AMRUT is administered by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, which approves the State Annual Action Plans through which the mission operates and releases central assistance against them.
• AMRUT was launched on the same day as the Smart Cities Mission and the urban component of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, as part of a single package of central urban initiatives.
• AMRUT 2.0 was launched on 1 October 2021 and extends the mission to all statutory towns with the objective of universal coverage of water supply, along with an emphasis on recycling treated water and rejuvenating urban water bodies.

• Missing the negation in the stem and choosing a statement that is correct, which is how this format is most often failed since nothing in the printing marks the word 'not'
• Accepting a statement that describes a mission covering selected cities as though it covered the whole country
• Nominating the option carrying a date or a figure merely because it cannot be recalled, when an unverifiable statement is not thereby a false one
• Reducing AMRUT to a water supply scheme, when the mission covers sewerage and septage, storm water drainage, green spaces and non-motorised transport as well

Central schemes reach MPSC papers as launch-year questions, ministry questions, coverage questions and component questions, and the negative variant used here is the Commission's preferred way of testing several of those at once, since three of the four statements have to be verified before the fourth can be nominated. Missions with a version 2.0 are especially useful to an examiner, because the difference between the two versions — here five hundred selected cities against all statutory towns — supplies a ready-made false statement. The efficient preparation for any mission is a five-line note holding the launch date, the ministry, the coverage, the thrust areas and what changed in the later version, since almost every question that can be built from a scheme can be answered from those five lines.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, as launched in June 2015, covered how many cities and towns of the country ?

  • (a)100 cities selected through a competition
  • (b)500 selected cities and towns
  • (c)All statutory towns in the country
  • (d)Only the cities with a population above one million

  Answer(b) 500 selected cities and towns — the mission was deliberately selective, and it was AMRUT 2.0, launched on 1 October 2021, that extended the approach to all statutory towns with the aim of universal water supply coverage. The figure of 100 cities selected through a competition belongs to the Smart Cities Mission, which was launched on the same day but works on a different principle.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is not among the thrust areas of the AMRUT mission ?

  • (a)Water supply and sewerage
  • (b)Storm water drainage
  • (c)Green spaces and parks
  • (d)Construction of rural link roads

  Answer(d) Construction of rural link roads — AMRUT is an urban mission and its thrust areas are water supply, sewerage and septage management, storm water drainage, green spaces and parks, and non-motorised urban transport. Rural connectivity is the subject of a separate programme altogether, the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, which is administered by the rural development ministry.