MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 43 of 100

Correct — option (2), "Only (b) and (c)". All three statements are lifted from the same source, the Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2025-26 brought out by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics of the State's Planning Department. Two are reproduced faithfully and one has been altered by a single transposed digit. Statement (b) is correct as printed. The Survey records 51,636 functional Fair Price Shops across the State as on 31 October 2025. The figure and the cut-off date both match. Statement (c) is correct as printed. The Survey records that up to October 2025 about 1.55 crore families availed ration through Aadhaar-based biometric authentication. Again the figure and the reference month match. Statement (a) is not correct. The Survey's number for December 2025 is 270.84 lakh ration card holders, made up of 58.68 lakh yellow, 190.15 lakh saffron and 22.01 lakh white cards. The question prints 270.48 lakh. The digits after the decimal point have been swapped — 84 has become 48 — and that is the whole of the error. It is not a rounding difference and not a different data vintage; it is a deliberately planted near-miss. So (b) and (c) stand, (a) falls, and the credited choice is option (2). There is a structural lesson worth more than the three figures. Look at how the options are built: statement (a) appears in option (1), option (3) and option (4). It appears in three of the four choices. That means the whole question collapses the instant you can rule statement (a) out — three options die together and only option (2) is left standing, and you never have to satisfy yourself independently about (b) or (c) at all. When a compound-statement question offers you four combinations, always ask which single statement, if falsified, kills the most options. Spending your effort on that one statement is far more efficient than checking all three, and on a paper with a quarter-mark negative penalty efficiency is the whole game. The second lesson is about how this examiner plants errors. When two of three figures reproduce a published table exactly and the third is a near-miss in the last digits, the near-miss is almost always the intended falsehood. An examiner who wanted to make statement (a) obviously wrong would have written 170 lakh or 370 lakh. Writing 270.48 against a true 270.84 is aimed squarely at the candidate who has read the Survey but read it quickly.

• (1)Only (a) and (b) — Option (1) accepts statement (a), whose ration-card figure of 270.48 lakh does not match the Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2025-26 reading of 270.84 lakh for December 2025. It also rejects statement (c), which is reproduced correctly — the Survey does record about 1.55 crore families availing ration through Aadhaar-based biometric authentication up to October 2025. The choice therefore gets both of the statements it rules on wrong, keeping the false one and discarding a true one.
• (3)Only (a) and (c) — Option (3) again accepts the transposed ration-card figure in statement (a), and additionally rejects statement (b), the Fair Price Shop count, which is exactly right: 51,636 functional shops as on 31 October 2025, precisely as the Survey has it. This is the choice of a candidate who half-remembers a shop count somewhere in the fifty-thousands and decides the printed figure is too specific to be true. Specificity is not evidence of falsehood; here it is the sign of a directly quoted line.
• (4)(a), (b) and (c) — Option (4) is the sweep — it takes all three, and would be right if the examiner had merely reprinted the Survey. He did not. Statement (a) carries a transposed decimal, 270.48 for the Survey's 270.84 lakh. In a three-statement question where two figures are verifiably exact, the temptation to wave the third through is strong, and it is exactly the temptation this option is built to catch. An 'all of them' choice needs every component verified, not two verified and one assumed.

The Public Distribution System is the country's food-security delivery network: the Food Corporation of India procures and stores foodgrain, the Centre allocates it to States, and the States move it through a chain of godowns to Fair Price Shops, where entitled households lift their monthly quota against a ration card. Since the National Food Security Act, 2013 the entitlement is a legal one rather than a discretionary benefit, and the classification of beneficiaries runs on two categories — Antyodaya Anna Yojana households, who receive a fixed quantity per household, and priority households, who receive a per-person quantity. Maharashtra issues its ration cards in three colours, yellow, saffron and white, which is why the State's card statistics are always reported as a three-way breakup. The system's chronic weakness has been leakage: ghost cards, diversion of grain, and shops recording issues that never took place. The technological response has been end-to-end computerisation of the supply chain and Aadhaar-based biometric authentication at the point of sale, so that the shop can only record a transaction against a beneficiary who is physically present and whose fingerprint matches.

The Economic Survey of Maharashtra is the single most heavily mined document in the MPSC Paper-I economics section. It is prepared by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics under the State Planning Department and tabled in the Legislature alongside the annual Budget, and its Highlights booklet reduces each sector to a handful of numbered lines. Those lines are almost the exact unit in which MPSC writes its statement-based questions — this question is three of them, one altered. Reading the Highlights of the most recent Survey before the examination is therefore worth a disproportionate number of marks, and reading it with attention to the cut-off dates attached to each figure is worth more still, because the Survey deliberately reports different indicators as of different months and the examiner reproduces those dates faithfully. Note the pattern in this very question: ration cards as of December 2025, shops as on 31 October 2025, biometric coverage up to October 2025 — three different reference points in three consecutive lines.

• Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2025-26: as of December 2025 the State had 270.84 lakh ration card holders in all — 58.68 lakh yellow, 190.15 lakh saffron and 22.01 lakh white. The question's 270.48 lakh is this figure with the last two digits transposed.
• The same Survey records 51,636 functional Fair Price Shops across Maharashtra as on 31 October 2025, and about 1.55 crore families availing ration through Aadhaar-based biometric authentication up to October 2025. Both are reproduced correctly in the question.
• Under the One Nation One Ration Card scheme, up to October 2025 about 1.40 lakh ration card holders from Maharashtra had lifted foodgrain in other States, while 18.97 lakh cardholders from other States had lifted foodgrain in Maharashtra — a large net inflow reflecting migration into the State.
• Maharashtra's Shivbhojan Thali scheme had 1,874 centres functioning at the end of November 2025, and 4.09 crore thalis were distributed during 2025-26 up to November, according to the same Survey.
• The Economic Survey of Maharashtra is prepared by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Planning Department, Government of Maharashtra, and is tabled in the State Legislature along with the Budget; its Highlights booklet is the direct source of most MPSC data-recall questions on the State economy.

• Ignoring the cut-off date attached to a figure. This question alone carries three different reference points — December 2025, 31 October 2025 and October 2025 — and an examiner can falsify a statement by moving the date while leaving the number untouched.
• Treating a very precise figure as suspicious. 51,636 looks invented and is exact; 270.48 lakh looks plausible and is the planted error. Precision is a sign of quotation, not of fabrication.
• Checking every statement when one of them decides the question. Statement (a) appears in three of the four options, so falsifying it settles the answer outright and the remaining two need no verification.
• Confusing the ration card count with the beneficiary count. Cards are counted in lakhs of households; persons covered under NFSA run to crores, and the two figures are never interchangeable.

The Commission asks Maharashtra PDS in two shapes. The first is this one — two or three lines lifted verbatim from the current Economic Survey with a single figure or date altered, offered as a combination of statements. The second is conceptual and statutory: the categories of beneficiary under the National Food Security Act, the entitlement per person per month, the issue price of wheat and rice, or the machinery of the State Food Commission and the grievance redressal officer. The data questions reward reading the newest Survey; the statutory questions reward reading the Act once properly, because its numbers do not change from year to year. A candidate short of time should learn the Act cold and skim the Survey Highlights, in that order — the Act is permanent capital, the Survey is a fresh purchase every year.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Economic Survey of Maharashtra, the principal source of the State's official economic statistics, is prepared by which body ?

  • (a)Maharashtra State Finance Commission
  • (b)Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Planning Department
  • (c)Maharashtra Economic Development Council
  • (d)Maharashtra Institute for Transformation

  Answer(b) Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Planning Department. The Directorate compiles the Survey and it is tabled in the State Legislature alongside the annual Budget. The Finance Commission of a State deals with local body devolution, and the other two bodies named are not the compilers of the Survey — a distinction MPSC tests because candidates quote the Survey constantly without knowing who produces it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the One Nation One Ration Card scheme, the figures reported in the Economic Survey of Maharashtra 2025-26 show that :

  • (a)Maharashtra recorded a large net inflow — far more cardholders from other States lifted grain in Maharashtra than Maharashtra cardholders lifted outside
  • (b)Maharashtra recorded a large net outflow of portability transactions
  • (c)inward and outward portability transactions were almost exactly balanced
  • (d)Maharashtra had not yet joined the portability network

  Answer(a) a large net inflow. Up to October 2025 about 1.40 lakh Maharashtra cardholders had lifted foodgrain in other States, while 18.97 lakh cardholders from other States had lifted foodgrain in Maharashtra — an inflow more than thirteen times the outflow, which is what one expects of a State that receives migrant labour from across the country rather than sending it.