Match the pairs (BRICS Summits) : A A. 16th BRICS Summit B. 15th BRICS Summit C. 14th BRICS Summit D. 13th BRICS Summit B i. New Delhi ii. Beijing iii. Johannesburg iv. Kazan
- (1)iv, i, ii, iii
- (2)iii, ii, i, iv
- (3)ii, iii, iv, i
- (4)iv, iii, ii, i
Correct — option (4), 'iv, iii, ii, i'. Matching each summit to its host city in descending numerical order gives exactly this sequence. The 16th BRICS Summit (A) was hosted by Russia at Kazan in October 2024, matching it to (iv). The 15th BRICS Summit (B) was hosted by South Africa at Johannesburg in August 2023 — the summit at which the bloc announced its first expansion, inviting new members including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — matching it to (iii). The 14th BRICS Summit (C) was hosted by China, held virtually and chaired from Beijing in June 2022, matching it to (ii). The 13th BRICS Summit (D) was hosted by India, held virtually and chaired from New Delhi in September 2021, matching it to (i). Reading the pairs together — A-iv, B-iii, C-ii, D-i — gives the sequence iv, iii, ii, i, which is option (4).
- (1)iv, i, ii, iii — Gets the 16th Summit right (Kazan) but swaps the host cities for the 15th and 13th summits — this sequence pairs the 15th Summit with New Delhi and the 13th Summit with Johannesburg, when it is actually the reverse: the 15th Summit was at Johannesburg in 2023 and the 13th was chaired from New Delhi in 2021.
- (2)iii, ii, i, iv — Runs the sequence almost entirely backwards against the correct city-to-summit pairing, placing the 16th Summit at Johannesburg and the 13th Summit at Kazan — the reverse of the correct pairs, in which Kazan hosted the 16th Summit (2024) and New Delhi chaired the 13th (2021).
- (3)ii, iii, iv, i — Shifts every summit down by one position relative to the correct order, pairing the 16th Summit with Beijing rather than Kazan, and the 14th Summit with Kazan rather than Beijing — a one-step offset that produces four individually wrong pairs even though each city does appear somewhere in the list.
BRICS is the grouping of major emerging economies — originally Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — that holds an annual summit hosted in rotation among its members, with the host country also chairing the bloc for that year. Recent summits in descending order are: the 16th Summit at Kazan, Russia, in October 2024; the 15th Summit at Johannesburg, South Africa, in August 2023, which announced the bloc's first expansion; the 14th Summit, chaired by China and held virtually from Beijing in June 2022; and the 13th Summit, chaired by India and held virtually from New Delhi in September 2021. The rotation of the host nation, one summit per year, is the anchor fact that makes this kind of matching question answerable once the sequence of host countries is held in memory.
MPSC and UPSC both use BRICS summit-to-city matching as a reliable recent-current-affairs question because the host rotates transparently and each year's summit carries its own distinct headline outcome — the 2023 Johannesburg summit for the bloc's expansion, the 2024 Kazan summit for the scale of the expanded grouping's first full summit. The safeguard against exactly the kind of one-step or reversed-order error this question's wrong options are built from is to hold the sequence of host countries — India, China, South Africa, Russia, Brazil — as a repeating rotation rather than memorising city names in isolation.
- 13th BRICS Summit — chaired by India, held virtually from New Delhi, September 2021.
- 14th BRICS Summit — chaired by China, held virtually from Beijing, June 2022.
- 15th BRICS Summit — hosted by South Africa at Johannesburg, August 2023; this summit announced the bloc's first expansion, inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE among new members.
- 16th BRICS Summit — hosted by Russia at Kazan, October 2024, the first full summit of the expanded grouping.
- BRICS summits rotate annually among member countries, with the host nation also serving as the bloc's chair for that year.
- 13th Summit — New Delhi, India, Sept 2021
- 14th Summit — Beijing, China, June 2022
- 15th Summit — Johannesburg, South Africa, Aug 2023 (first expansion announced)
- 16th Summit — Kazan, Russia, Oct 2024
D-i, C-ii, B-iii, A-iv — read in reverse order, that's iv, iii, ii, i.
- Shifting the entire host-city sequence by one position, pairing each summit with the city that actually belongs to the summit before or after it
- Reversing the order of host cities relative to summit numbers, especially confusing which of Johannesburg and New Delhi came earlier in the rotation
- Forgetting that the 13th and 14th summits, hosted by India and China respectively, were held virtually rather than in person, which does not change their host-city attribution for matching purposes
MPSC and UPSC both use a match-the-columns format for a run of recent international summits, most often BRICS, G20 or SCO, pairing the ordinal number of the summit against its host city, and the wrong options are typically built by a one-step shift or a reversal of the correct sequence rather than by substituting an entirely wrong city. The defence is to hold the host-country rotation as an ordered list — for BRICS, India, China, South Africa, Russia — rather than memorising city names as a disconnected set.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The 15th BRICS Summit, at which the bloc announced its first expansion of membership, was held in which city ?
- (a)New Delhi
- (b)Beijing
- (c)Johannesburg
- (d)Kazan
Answer(c) Johannesburg — hosted by South Africa in August 2023, the summit at which BRICS invited new members including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Kazan hosted the following summit, the 16th, in 2024.
- practice — not a real PYQ
India chaired and hosted the 13th BRICS Summit, held virtually from New Delhi, in which year ?
- (a)2019
- (b)2020
- (c)2021
- (d)2022
Answer(c) 2021 — the 13th BRICS Summit was chaired by India and held virtually from New Delhi in September 2021. China chaired the following summit, the 14th, from Beijing in 2022.