MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 89 of 100

Correct — option (2), 'Only B, C'. Statement B is accurate: National Girl Child Day has been observed since 2008, an initiative of the Ministry of Women and Child Development intended to spread public awareness about the inequities girls face — in survival, education, health, nutrition and safety — and to mark the occasion with programmes celebrating girls' achievements. Statement C is also accurate: the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched on 22 January 2015, at Panipat in Haryana, to address the declining child sex ratio and to promote the survival, protection and education of the girl child. Statement A is the one that fails, on a date it shares with statement C: National Girl Child Day is observed on 24 January, not 22 January. The confusion is a natural one to fall into, because 22 January is a real, significant date for the girl child in India — it is the date on which the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched, in 2015 — but that is a different observance from National Girl Child Day, which falls two days later, on 24 January. Because statement A prints the wrong date for National Girl Child Day, it fails, and only B and C, both of which are accurate as printed, survive together.

• (1)Only A, B — Correctly keeps the founding year of National Girl Child Day but wrongly dates the observance itself to 22 January. National Girl Child Day is observed on 24 January; 22 January is instead the date on which the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched, in 2015 — a different initiative that this option drops.
• (3)Only A, C — Correctly keeps the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao launch year but wrongly dates National Girl Child Day to 22 January and drops the correct statement about its 2008 origin. The date confusion here is exactly the trap the question is built around: 22 January is genuinely significant, but for the scheme in statement C, not for National Girl Child Day.
• (4)All of the above — Requires National Girl Child Day to fall on 22 January, but it is observed on 24 January. Statement A's date collides with the correct date of statement C's scheme launch, which is precisely the kind of adjacent-date confusion this option set is designed to catch.

Two closely dated but distinct girl-child initiatives sit behind this question. National Girl Child Day has been observed on 24 January every year since 2008, an initiative of the Ministry of Women and Child Development to draw public attention to the discrimination and inequities girls face in India — in areas such as survival, education, nutrition, health and safety — and to celebrate girls' achievements. The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme, a joint initiative of the Ministries of Women and Child Development, Health and Family Welfare, and Education, was launched two days earlier in the calendar year but in a different year — on 22 January 2015, at Panipat, Haryana — specifically to arrest the declining child sex ratio and to ensure the survival, protection and education of the girl child.

MPSC and UPSC both favour this kind of adjacent-date question because 22 and 24 January sit two days apart and both genuinely concern the girl child in India, which makes the swap a natural and frequent error rather than an arbitrary distractor. The safe habit is to hold the date and the year together for each initiative as a single fact — National Girl Child Day, 24 January, since 2008; Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, 22 January, launched 2015 — rather than a loose sense that 'January has a girl-child observance'.

• National Girl Child Day is observed on 24 January every year, an initiative of the Ministry of Women and Child Development running since 2008.
• It aims to spread awareness about the inequities faced by girls in India, in areas including survival, education, health, nutrition and safety.
• The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 22 January 2015, at Panipat, Haryana.
• The scheme was launched to address India's declining child sex ratio and to promote the survival, protection and education of the girl child.
• The two dates, 22 and 24 January, belong to two separate initiatives — the scheme launch and the awareness day respectively — a pairing MPSC and UPSC regularly test by swapping one date for the other.

• Swapping 24 January (National Girl Child Day) for 22 January (Beti Bachao Beti Padhao's launch date), since the two dates are only two days apart and both concern the girl child
• Confusing the founding year of National Girl Child Day (2008, an awareness day) with the launch year of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (2015, a funded scheme) — the two are different initiatives with different starting years
• Treating National Girl Child Day and the International Day of the Girl Child (11 October, a United Nations observance) as the same event

MPSC and UPSC both like to test closely dated national observances and schemes by printing the correct date of one against the correct date of the other, banking on the two-day proximity to produce a plausible-sounding error. The defence is to anchor each date to the specific initiative it belongs to — 24 January to National Girl Child Day since 2008, 22 January to the 2015 launch of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao — rather than treating late January as a single undifferentiated girl-child observance period.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  National Girl Child Day, observed since 2008, falls on which date every year ?

  • (a)22 January
  • (b)24 January
  • (c)26 January
  • (d)11 October

  Answer(b) 24 January — National Girl Child Day has been observed on this date since 2008. 22 January is instead the date on which the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched, in 2015, and 11 October is the UN's International Day of the Girl Child.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme was launched by the Prime Minister at which location, on 22 January 2015 ?

  • (a)New Delhi
  • (b)Panipat, Haryana
  • (c)Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
  • (d)Ahmedabad, Gujarat

  Answer(b) Panipat, Haryana — chosen because Haryana then recorded one of India's most skewed child sex ratios, making it a symbolically pointed launch venue for a scheme aimed at reversing that trend.