MPSC 2023 Prelims Q96: Who has been appointed as the Chairman of Pension Fund

Q: What is the answer to MPSC 2023 Prelims Q96?

(2). Correct — option (2), Deepak Mohanty. The Government of India appointed Deepak Mohanty Chairperson of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority in March 2023, the appointment being notified in the middle of that month, and he took charge later in the same month; he held the office until 2025. He was not a new arrival at the authority, having served as one of its whole-time members before being elevated, and he came to it from the Reserve Bank of India, where he had been an Executive Director. Mamta Shankar was appointed a whole-time member of the authority at the same time. He succeeded Supratim Bandyopadhyay, whose term as chairperson had come to an end earlier in 2023, which is why option (4) names the outgoing rather than the incoming chairman and is the distractor most likely to catch a candidate who followed the story a few months late. The office matters because of what the authority does. The PFRDA is the statutory regulator of India's pension sector, constituted under the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 2013 and functioning under the Ministry of Finance; it regulates the National Pension System, which covers central government employees who joined service on or after 1 January 2004 as well as State government employees, corporate subscribers and any citizen who chooses to join, and it also administers the Atal Pension Yojana for workers in the unorganised sector. Its chairperson therefore sits alongside the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the chairpersons of the Securities and Exchange Board of India and of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority as one of the country's principal financial regulators, which is exactly why the appointment is examinable. Option (2) is the answer.

MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 96 of 100

Maharashtra Gazetted Civil Services Combined Preliminary Examination 2023, held 4 June 2023. Transcribed from the commission's own booklet (संच A); answer as per the official MPSC final answer key.

Who has been appointed as the Chairman of Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) by Government in March 2023 ?

(1)Amitava Mukharjee
(2)Deepak Mohanty
(3)Rajesh Malhotra
(4)Supratim Bandopadhyay

Answer

(2)

Why

Correct — option (2), Deepak Mohanty. The Government of India appointed Deepak Mohanty Chairperson of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority in March 2023, the appointment being notified in the middle of that month, and he took charge later in the same month; he held the office until 2025. He was not a new arrival at the authority, having served as one of its whole-time members before being elevated, and he came to it from the Reserve Bank of India, where he had been an Executive Director. Mamta Shankar was appointed a whole-time member of the authority at the same time. He succeeded Supratim Bandyopadhyay, whose term as chairperson had come to an end earlier in 2023, which is why option (4) names the outgoing rather than the incoming chairman and is the distractor most likely to catch a candidate who followed the story a few months late. The office matters because of what the authority does. The PFRDA is the statutory regulator of India's pension sector, constituted under the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 2013 and functioning under the Ministry of Finance; it regulates the National Pension System, which covers central government employees who joined service on or after 1 January 2004 as well as State government employees, corporate subscribers and any citizen who chooses to join, and it also administers the Atal Pension Yojana for workers in the unorganised sector. Its chairperson therefore sits alongside the Governor of the Reserve Bank and the chairpersons of the Securities and Exchange Board of India and of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority as one of the country's principal financial regulators, which is exactly why the appointment is examinable. Option (2) is the answer.

Why the others are wrong

(1)Amitava Mukharjee — The paper prints this option as 'Amitava Mukharjee'. The spelling is a misprint — the surname is conventionally written Mukherjee — and it has been reproduced here exactly as the Commission printed it, since the stem and the options of a past paper are not the card's to correct. Whoever the option was meant to name, the appointment in question did not go to him: the chairmanship of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority was conferred on Deepak Mohanty in March 2023. Options of this kind, carrying a common Indian surname and no other identifying detail, are the cheapest form of distractor an examiner can write, because a candidate who is guessing cannot exclude a name he has never encountered. The practical response is to work forward from the fact rather than backward from the options: if you know who was appointed, an unfamiliar name costs you nothing, and if you do not, no amount of scrutiny of the name will help.
(3)Rajesh Malhotra — This option offers another plain name with no identifying detail attached, and it functions in the same way as option (1) — as an occupant of one of the four slots that a candidate cannot eliminate by reasoning. Nothing connects it to the March 2023 appointment, which went to Deepak Mohanty. It is worth noting the shape of this option set, because it is common in appointment questions: one correct name, one name that is genuinely connected to the office but at the wrong moment in time, and two names that carry no connection at all. The dangerous option is always the second kind, since it rewards partial knowledge with a wrong answer. Options of the third kind are harmless to a prepared candidate and decisive against an unprepared one, which is precisely the discrimination the examiner is after.
(4)Supratim Bandopadhyay — Supratim Bandyopadhyay — printed here as 'Bandopadhyay' — is the sharpest distractor in the set, because he is a real chairman of this very authority. He held the office until his term ended in 2023, and Deepak Mohanty was appointed to succeed him. A candidate whose preparation stopped a few months short, or who remembers the name attached to the PFRDA from earlier reading, will choose this option with confidence. The corrective is to record an appointment as a transition rather than as a name: X succeeded Y in month M of year N. Stored that way, the outgoing office-holder becomes an asset rather than a trap, because the question 'who was appointed in March 2023' and the question 'whom did he succeed' are then both answerable from the same line. Appointment questions very frequently offer the predecessor as an option for exactly this reason.

Concept

The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority is the youngest of India's major financial regulators. It began as an interim body created by a government resolution in 2003, when the shift from a defined-benefit pension for government employees to a defined-contribution system required a regulator, and it acquired statutory standing under the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 2013, which came into force in February 2014. Its central task is the regulation and development of the National Pension System: it registers and supervises the pension funds that manage subscribers' money, the central recordkeeping agencies that maintain the accounts, the points of presence through which subscribers enrol, and the trustee bank; it prescribes investment norms and the rules on exit and annuity purchase; and it protects the interests of subscribers. The National Pension System applies to central government employees recruited on or after 1 January 2004, apart from the armed forces, and has been adopted by most States; since 2009 it has been open to any citizen. The Atal Pension Yojana, launched in 2015, extends a guaranteed minimum pension to workers in the unorganised sector and is administered by the same authority. Together these make the PFRDA the regulator of the retirement savings of a very large part of the organised and unorganised workforce.

Appointments to regulatory and constitutional offices are among the most reliable current affairs questions a State Public Service Commission can set, because they are dated, verifiable and free of controversy. They are also among the most reliably mishandled, because candidates store them as isolated names. The form that survives an examination is a line per office recording the current holder, the month of appointment, and the person succeeded — since the examiner will often place the predecessor among the options, as has been done here with Supratim Bandyopadhyay. The offices worth tracking in this way are few: the Governor and Deputy Governors of the Reserve Bank, the chairpersons of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority and the PFRDA, the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Chief Election Commissioner, the chairpersons of the national commissions, and, for a Maharashtra candidate, the equivalent State offices. This question also illustrates a printing habit of this paper worth noting once and then setting aside: proper names are transliterated inconsistently and sometimes misspelt, 'Amitava Mukharjee' in option (1) and 'Bandopadhyay' in option (4) being examples. The spelling of a name is never the point of the question, and hesitating over it wastes time that the paper does not give you.

Key facts

Deepak Mohanty was appointed Chairperson of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority by the Government of India in March 2023 and held the office until 2025.
He had served as a whole-time member of the authority before his elevation and had earlier been an Executive Director of the Reserve Bank of India; Mamta Shankar was appointed a whole-time member at the same time.
He succeeded Supratim Bandyopadhyay, whose term as chairperson ended earlier in 2023, and whose name is printed in this question as 'Bandopadhyay'.
The PFRDA is the statutory regulator of India's pension sector under the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 2013, which came into force in February 2014; it began as an interim body created by government resolution in 2003.
It regulates the National Pension System, which applies to central government employees recruited on or after 1 January 2004 other than the armed forces and is open to all citizens, and it administers the Atal Pension Yojana for the unorganised sector.

Record an appointment as a TRANSITION — X succeeded Y in month M of year N

(1) Amitava Mukharjee→NO CONNECTION FOUND — a plain name with no identifying detail, of the kind a candidate cannot eliminate by reasoning. Nothing is asserted here about who the option was meant to name; the appointment did not go to him. The spelling is the Commission's own and is left as printed

(2) Deepak Mohanty→CORRECT — appointed Chairperson of the PFRDA in March 2023 and in office until 2025. He was already a whole-time member of the authority, and before that an Executive Director of the Reserve Bank; Mamta Shankar became a whole-time member at the same time

(3) Rajesh Malhotra→NO CONNECTION FOUND — the same kind of option as (1), and harmless to a prepared candidate for the same reason

(4) Supratim Bandopadhyay→THE DANGEROUS ONE — a REAL chairman of this very authority, whose term ended earlier in 2023 and whom Mohanty succeeded. It rewards preparation that stopped a few months short, which is what makes it the sharpest distractor in the set

Stored as a transition, the outgoing holder becomes an asset instead of a trap. The office is examinable because of what it governs: the PFRDA is the statutory pension regulator under the 2013 Act, running the National Pension System — compulsory for central government recruits from 1 January 2004 and open to any citizen — and the Atal Pension Yojana for the unorganised sector, which puts its chairperson beside the RBI Governor and the heads of SEBI and IRDAI.

Study next

India's financial regulators — the Reserve Bank of India, SEBI, IRDAI and PFRDA — their statutes, their mandates and their current headsThe National Pension System — its structure of pension funds, central recordkeeping agencies and points of presence, its tiers and its exit and annuity rulesThe Atal Pension Yojana and pension coverage of the unorganised sector, including eligibility, contribution and the guaranteed pension slabsThe shift from the old defined-benefit pension to the defined-contribution National Pension System in 2004, and the debate over restoring the old scheme in the StatesSocial security in India — the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, the Employees' State Insurance Corporation and the labour codes on social security

Common traps

Naming the outgoing office-holder because the appointment is recent and the predecessor's name is better established in memory
Storing appointments as bare names rather than as transitions with a month and a predecessor, which is what the question actually tests
Hesitating over an option because a name is spelt unusually, when this paper transliterates and misprints names throughout and the spelling is never the point
Confusing the PFRDA with the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, which is a statutory body administering provident fund and pension schemes for organised sector employees rather than a regulator

Appointment questions appear in every MPSC current affairs section and are set in three grades. The simplest names the office and asks who holds it. The second names a month and asks who was appointed then, which defeats a candidate who knows the current holder but not the date. The third asks whom the appointee succeeded, or places the predecessor among the options as this question does, which defeats a candidate who knows only one name attached to the office. All three are answered by the same one-line record per office, carrying the holder, the month of appointment and the person succeeded. Financial regulators are favoured because their heads change on fixed terms and the appointments are formally notified, and a question on the PFRDA chairperson often sits next to one on what the authority regulates, so the institution should be prepared alongside the name.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority regulates which of the following ?
- (a)The National Pension System and the Atal Pension Yojana
- (b)The Employees' Provident Fund and the Employees' State Insurance scheme
- (c)Life insurance and general insurance business in India
- (d)Mutual funds and collective investment schemes
Answer(a) The National Pension System and the Atal Pension Yojana — the authority registers and supervises the pension funds, recordkeeping agencies and points of presence of the National Pension System, prescribes its investment and exit rules, and administers the Atal Pension Yojana for the unorganised sector. Insurance is regulated by the IRDAI and mutual funds by SEBI, while the provident fund and State insurance schemes are administered by their own statutory bodies.
practice — not a real PYQ
The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority acquired statutory status under an Act passed in which year ?
- (a)2003
- (b)2009
- (c)2013
- (d)2015
Answer(c) 2013 — the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act was passed in 2013 and came into force in February 2014, converting into a statutory regulator a body that had existed since 2003 only by a government resolution. The year 2003 in the first option is when the interim authority was created, and 2015 in the last option is when the Atal Pension Yojana was launched.