MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 86 of 100

Correct — option (4). Read the stem first: the word 'not' is printed in bold, so the item asks for the one statement that is FALSE about Karpoori Thakur, and everything you can confirm about him has to be left out of the answer instead of put into it. Option (4) says he won a state assembly election in 1952 from the Samastipur constituency. He did enter the Bihar Vidhan Sabha in 1952, and he did so from Samastipur district — but the constituency was TAJPUR, which he contested as a Socialist Party candidate. Naming the district in place of the seat is the error, and it is the only definite factual mistake among the four printed lines. The other three hold. He is universally known as Jan Nayak, the people's leader, which is option (1). He is the man the phrase 'Bihar's first non-Congress Chief Minister' is habitually attached to, having taken office in December 1970 as the first socialist to head the state, which is option (2). And he was born on 24 January 1924 in the village of Pitaunjhia — since renamed Karpoori Gram in his honour — in Samastipur district, which is option (3). The reason he was in the news in the year this paper was set is that the Bharat Ratna was announced for him posthumously on 23 January 2024, on the eve of his birth centenary. Note the neat cruelty of the item's design: the same district, Samastipur, appears in the statement that is true and in the statement that is false, and the candidate has to know that a district is not a constituency.

• (1)He is also known as 'Jan Nayak'. — This is true, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking what is NOT true. Jan Nayak, the people's leader, is the title by which Karpoori Thakur is universally known in Bihar politics, earned by a career built on backward-class and poor-peasant mobilisation and by a personal austerity that became proverbial. Choosing this option nearly always means the negation in the stem was missed — the bold 'not' is the single most important word in the question and it does not survive into a plain-text reading.
• (2)He was First non-congress Chief Minister of Bihar. — This is the description conventionally attached to him and the paper treats it as true, so it is not the statement being sought. Karpoori Thakur became Chief Minister of Bihar in December 1970, the first socialist to hold the office, and returned to it from June 1977 to April 1979 at the head of a Janata Party government, in which term he introduced the reservation formula that carries his name. Anyone drawn to this option is usually reasoning that a Congress-dominated state must have had an earlier non-Congress chief minister, which is a live historical point but not the error the question is built on: the checkable mistake in this set is the constituency named in option (4).
• (3)He was born in 1924, in a village in Samastipur District. — This is true. He was born on 24 January 1924 in Pitaunjhia village, in what is now Samastipur district of Bihar; the village was later renamed Karpoori Gram. The statement is also the reason the fourth option is so effective a trap — having just confirmed 'Samastipur district' here, a candidate reads 'Samastipur Constituency' in option (4) and lets it pass as the same fact restated. A district contains many assembly constituencies, and his was Tajpur.

Karpoori Thakur (24 January 1924 - 17 February 1988) belongs to the socialist stream of Indian politics that grew out of the Congress Socialist Party and, through Ram Manohar Lohia, made backward-class representation its central demand. Born in Pitaunjhia village in Samastipur district into a family of the Nai community, he was first elected to the Bihar assembly in 1952 from Tajpur on a Socialist Party ticket and remained an assembly figure for the rest of his life. He was Chief Minister twice — from December 1970 to June 1971, and from June 1977 to April 1979 — and his second term produced the measure for which he is remembered in policy terms: a reservation scheme of 1978 that divided the quota rather than treating the backward classes as one block, giving 12 per cent to the Other Backward Classes, 8 per cent to the Most Backward Classes, 3 per cent to women and 3 per cent to the economically backward among the upper castes. The idea that a quota can be sub-divided so that its benefit reaches the weakest within a category is his lasting contribution to Indian reservation policy, and it is why he was in the news again in January 2024, when the Bharat Ratna was announced for him posthumously on the eve of his birth centenary.

This is a current-affairs question with a history syllabus hidden inside it, which is how MPSC usually builds items around a figure who has just been honoured. Three of the four statements are the kind of thing any newspaper profile carries; the fourth carries a detail — the constituency — that only a reader who went past the profile would know. That is the standard shape of a 'which is not true' item on a person in the news: the false statement is not absurd, it is a near miss on one specific noun. Two habits follow. First, read the bolded negation before anything else, because the paper marks it and the mark is invisible once the text is stripped; this is one of eleven questions in the 2024 paper whose stem is negative. Second, when a set of statements about one person repeats a place name, check whether the two uses are doing the same work — here 'Samastipur District' in one statement is true and 'Samastipur Constituency' in another is not. Note also that some references describe Bihar's first non-Congress ministry as the 1967 government formed after the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal experiment; the item does not turn on that, because only one statement contains an error that can be checked against a record.

• Karpoori Thakur was born on 24 January 1924 in Pitaunjhia village, Samastipur district, Bihar; the village was later renamed Karpoori Gram.
• He first entered the Bihar Vidhan Sabha in 1952 from the Tajpur constituency as a Socialist Party candidate.
• He served as Chief Minister of Bihar from 22 December 1970 to 2 June 1971 and again from 24 June 1977 to 21 April 1979.
• His 1978 reservation formula allotted 12 per cent to Other Backward Classes, 8 per cent to Most Backward Classes, 3 per cent to women and 3 per cent to the economically backward among upper castes.
• He is known as Jan Nayak, the people's leader.
• The Bharat Ratna was announced for him posthumously on 23 January 2024, the eve of his birth centenary.

• Missing the bolded 'not' in the stem and marking a statement that is true
• Reading a district name as a constituency name — he won from Tajpur, in Samastipur district
• Assuming that everything printed in a newspaper profile of a newly honoured figure is examinable-grade accurate
• Confusing the announcement of a Bharat Ratna with its conferment; the 2024 announcement came on 23 January and the award is posthumous

MPSC builds current-affairs questions around people who have just received a national honour, and it prefers the negative form because it forces a candidate to hold four facts rather than recognise one. The statements are drawn from a standard biography, with a single altered detail — a constituency, a year, a district, an office. The practical preparation is to note, for every major award announced in the year before the exam, the recipient's birth year and place, the office or work for which the honour was given, and one or two specifics that a headline would not carry.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bharat Ratna announced in January 2024 for Karpoori Thakur was conferred in what circumstances ?

  • (a)Posthumously, on the eve of his birth centenary
  • (b)During his second term as Chief Minister of Bihar
  • (c)Along with the Padma Vibhushan of the same year
  • (d)On the fiftieth anniversary of his first election to the Bihar assembly

  Answer(a) Posthumously, on the eve of his birth centenary — the award was announced on 23 January 2024, the day before the centenary of his birth on 24 January 1924. He had died in 1988.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The reservation formula introduced in Bihar in 1978 during Karpoori Thakur's chief ministership is remembered chiefly for which feature ?

  • (a)It raised total reservation in the state above fifty per cent
  • (b)It sub-divided the backward-class quota, giving a separate share to the Most Backward Classes
  • (c)It abolished reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
  • (d)It extended reservation to private sector employment

  Answer(b) It sub-divided the backward-class quota, giving a separate share to the Most Backward Classes — the 1978 scheme allotted 12 per cent to Other Backward Classes, 8 per cent to Most Backward Classes, 3 per cent to women and 3 per cent to the economically backward among upper castes. The principle that a quota can be sub-categorised so its benefit reaches the weakest within the group is the formula's lasting influence.