MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 76 of 100

Correct — option (3), 'January 25, 1950 - Adoption of National Calendar by the Government.' Read the stem first: the word 'incorrect' is printed in bold, so the question asks for the one pair that is wrong, and every pair a candidate can vouch for must be left out of the answer rather than put into it. Each of the four options is itself a complete date-and-event pair, so they have to be tested one at a time. The National Flag was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947, a few weeks before independence, in the form we know — the tricolour of saffron, white and green with the Ashoka Chakra of twenty-four spokes in navy blue at the centre, replacing the spinning wheel of the earlier Swaraj flag. The National Anthem was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 24 January 1950, the last working day of that body, when Jana Gana Mana, composed by Rabindranath Tagore, was adopted as the national anthem and Vande Mataram was given equal status as the national song. The State Emblem, adapted from the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath and carrying the words Satyameva Jayate below it, was adopted by the Government of India on 26 January 1950, the day the Constitution came into force. Those three pairs are all correct, and the remaining one is not. The National Calendar was not adopted in January 1950 at all: the Saka calendar was recommended by the Calendar Reform Committee under Meghnad Saha and was adopted for official use with effect from 22 March 1957, alongside the Gregorian calendar, its first month being Chaitra and its era counting from the year corresponding to 78 of the Christian era. Since the date printed against it is wrong, option (3) is the incorrect pair and therefore the answer.

• (1)July 22, 1947 - Adoption of National Flag by the Constituent Assembly. — This pair is correct, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking for the incorrect one. The Constituent Assembly adopted the national flag on 22 July 1947, on a resolution moved by Jawaharlal Nehru, in the design prepared by a committee under Rajendra Prasad: the horizontal tricolour of deep saffron, white and dark green in equal proportion with the Ashoka Chakra in the centre of the white band. Candidates sometimes doubt the date because it falls before 15 August 1947 and assume the flag must have been adopted at independence itself, but the Assembly settled the design in advance precisely so that it could be flown on the day.
• (2)January 24, 1950 - Adoption of National Anthem by the Constituent Assembly. — This pair is correct as well. On 24 January 1950 the Constituent Assembly, at its final sitting, adopted Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem, and the President of the Assembly announced that Vande Mataram would be honoured equally with it as the national song. The anthem is the first stanza of a song written by Rabindranath Tagore and first sung at the Calcutta session of the Congress in December 1911. The 24th and the 26th of January 1950 sit two days apart and are easily transposed, which is why both dates are printed in this question — but transposing them would be a different error from the one the question is actually testing.
• (4)January 26, 1950 - Adoption of National Emblem by the Government. — This pair is also correct. The State Emblem of India, adopted on 26 January 1950, is an adaptation of the Lion Capital erected by Ashoka at Sarnath: three of its four lions are visible, the wheel appears in relief in the centre of the abacus with a bull on the right and a horse on the left, and the words Satyameva Jayate, taken from the Mundaka Upanishad, are inscribed below in Devanagari. Its adoption on the day the Constitution came into force is easy to remember once the connection is made, and the pair belongs among the true ones that this negative question requires the candidate to set aside.

India's national identity symbols were settled at different moments and by different authorities, and the questions set on them turn on keeping those moments apart. The Constituent Assembly adopted the national flag on 22 July 1947 and the national anthem on 24 January 1950. The Government of India adopted the State Emblem on 26 January 1950, when the Constitution came into force. The national calendar came much later: a Calendar Reform Committee under the physicist Meghnad Saha examined the many calendars in use in India and recommended the Saka era, which the Government adopted with effect from 22 March 1957 for the Gazette of India, All India Radio news broadcasts, government calendars and communications addressed to the public, to be used alongside the Gregorian calendar. Other symbols were fixed later still and by executive decision — the tiger as national animal, the peacock as national bird, the banyan as national tree, the mango as national fruit, the lotus as national flower — and none of these carries constitutional status. Two further points are worth holding: the flag's Ashoka Chakra has twenty-four spokes and replaced the charkha of the earlier Swaraj flag, and the anthem's prescribed playing time is about fifty-two seconds for the full version.

This is one of the eleven questions in this paper whose stem carries a negation printed in bold, and the negation is the whole difficulty: three of the four options are true statements, and a candidate who reads the stem as asking for the correct pair will find three answers and no way to choose between them. The procedure that works on every question of this family is to mark each pair true or false first, without looking at what the stem wants, and only then apply the stem's polarity — here, choose the one marked false. The subject matter itself is straightforward general knowledge, and the paper's choice of dates is designed so that the three true pairs cluster in January 1950 and July 1947 while the false one borrows a date from that same cluster; 25 January is a real date in the national calendar of events, being National Voters' Day, which marks the founding of the Election Commission on 25 January 1950, and its familiarity is part of what makes the false pair look plausible.

• The Constituent Assembly adopted the national flag on 22 July 1947, with the Ashoka Chakra of twenty-four spokes replacing the charkha of the Swaraj flag.
• The Constituent Assembly adopted Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem on 24 January 1950, and gave Vande Mataram equal status as the national song.
• The State Emblem, adapted from the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath with the motto Satyameva Jayate, was adopted on 26 January 1950.
• The national calendar based on the Saka era was adopted with effect from 22 March 1957, following the recommendation of the Calendar Reform Committee chaired by Meghnad Saha, and is used alongside the Gregorian calendar.
• The Election Commission of India was established on 25 January 1950, which is why that date is observed as National Voters' Day.

• Missing the bolded 'incorrect' and choosing a pair that is true — the commonest way this format is failed
• Assuming the national flag was adopted on 15 August 1947; the Constituent Assembly settled it on 22 July 1947
• Transposing 24 and 26 January 1950, the dates of the anthem and the emblem respectively
• Assuming the national calendar was fixed along with the other symbols in 1950; it was adopted only in 1957

National symbols recur in MPSC papers as date-and-event pairing questions, often in the negative form used here, and occasionally as match-the-columns items. Because the events cluster within a few months of one another, the Commission's distractors are almost always near-miss dates rather than wildly wrong ones, so approximate memory is not enough — the four dates 22 July 1947, 24 January 1950, 26 January 1950 and 22 March 1957 are worth learning exactly. Where the stem is negative, the reliable method is to settle the truth of every option first and apply the polarity of the stem only at the end.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The national calendar of India, based on the Saka era, was adopted for official use with effect from :

  • (a)26 January 1950
  • (b)15 August 1947
  • (c)22 March 1957
  • (d)26 November 1949

  Answer(c) 22 March 1957 — the Saka calendar was adopted on the recommendation of the Calendar Reform Committee chaired by Meghnad Saha, for use alongside the Gregorian calendar in the Gazette of India, news broadcasts and government communications. The other dates belong to the commencement of the Constitution, independence and the adoption of the Constitution respectively.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The State Emblem of India is adapted from which of the following ?

  • (a)The Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath
  • (b)The Ashokan pillar at Vaishali
  • (c)The Sanchi Stupa gateway
  • (d)The Iron Pillar at Delhi

  Answer(a) The Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath — three of its four lions are visible in the emblem, with the wheel in relief on the abacus and the words Satyameva Jayate, from the Mundaka Upanishad, inscribed below in Devanagari. It was adopted on 26 January 1950.