MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 81 of 100

Correct — option (4), Arunachal Pradesh. The State government engaged the film actor Sanjay Dutt as brand ambassador for the golden jubilee of Arunachal Pradesh, and the media campaign he fronted was launched on 29 November 2021 at Mechukha in Shi-Yomi district in the presence of Chief Minister Pema Khandu. The jubilee itself was a year-long occasion with two fixed ends: it opened on 20 January 2022 at Ziro in Lower Subansiri district and closed on 20 February 2022 at Itanagar, which is the State's Statehood Day. What the fiftieth anniversary marked is the point a candidate should carry away, because it is easy to get wrong. It was not fifty years of statehood. Until 1972 the territory was administered as the North-East Frontier Agency, a frontier tract governed through Assam; on 20 January 1972 it was separated, given the name Arunachal Pradesh — 'land of the dawn-lit mountains' — and constituted a Union Territory. Full statehood came fifteen years later, on 20 February 1987, when Arunachal Pradesh became the twenty-fourth State of the Indian Union. The golden jubilee of 2022 therefore counted fifty years from the naming and the grant of Union Territory status in 1972, which is exactly why the celebration was made to run from 20 January to 20 February — from the anniversary of the 1972 change to the anniversary of the 1987 one. As brand ambassador the actor appeared in a series of promotional films on the State's tourism, and took part in outreach with young people on substance abuse, a problem the State has publicly acknowledged. Note carefully what the question is actually testing. It is not asking which State turned fifty in 2022, because more than one did: the same North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 that created the Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh also raised Manipur and Tripura to statehood with effect from 21 January 1972, one day later. The single fact that decides this question is the appointment of the brand ambassador, and that appointment belongs to Arunachal Pradesh, so option (4) is the answer.

• (1)Sikkim — Sikkim's calendar does not fit a golden jubilee in 2022 at all. It was a Himalayan kingdom under the Namgyal dynasty, a British Indian princely state from 1890 and then a protectorate of India after 1947; the monarchy was abolished after the referendum of April 1975, and on 16 May 1975 Sikkim became the twenty-second State of the Indian Union. Fifty years from that event falls in 2025, not 2022, and Sikkim's anniversary observances are dated from 16 May accordingly. The option is included because Sikkim is a small north-eastern State whose accession is remembered as a discrete dated event, which makes it superficially the same kind of answer as Arunachal Pradesh; the dates are what separate them, and the dates are worth memorising as a pair — 1975 for Sikkim's statehood, 1972 for Arunachal Pradesh's naming and Union Territory status, 1987 for its statehood.
• (2)Manipur — Manipur is the most dangerous of the three wrong options, because a candidate reasoning only from the jubilee will reach it honestly. Manipur was a princely state that merged with India in 1949, was administered as a Part C State and then as a Union Territory, and became a full State on 21 January 1972 under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 — the same statute and the same week as the creation of the Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh. Manipur, Meghalaya and Tripura all date their statehood to 21 January 1972, so 2022 was a fiftieth anniversary year for them as well. The option is wrong not because Manipur had no golden jubilee but because the brand ambassador named in the question was signed by Arunachal Pradesh. This is the standing lesson of current-affairs questions built on an anniversary: the anniversary is usually shared, and the answer turns on the specific event reported — here, the signing of a named person.
• (3)Assam — Assam has no fiftieth anniversary to celebrate in 2022 on any reckoning. It was a full province of British India long before independence, became a State of the Indian Union at the commencement of the Constitution, and it is Assam that steadily lost territory across the 1960s and 1970s as the other north-eastern units were carved out of it — Nagaland in 1963, Meghalaya as an autonomous State in 1970 and a full State in 1972, and the frontier tracts that became Arunachal Pradesh. Assam is therefore the parent unit in this story rather than one of the units with a 1972 birthday, and the option functions in this question as the familiar name that a candidate falls back on when the north-eastern dates are hazy. Fixing the direction of the process — territory moving out of Assam, not into it — is the quickest way to keep the region's reorganisation straight.

The administrative history of the north-east is a sequence of separations from Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh sits at the end of that sequence. The tract was organised by the British as the North-East Frontier Tracts from 1912-13 and was known from 1954 as the North-East Frontier Agency, or NEFA, administered through the Governor of Assam acting as the agent of the President rather than by an ordinary provincial government. The North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 rearranged the whole region at once with effect from 21 January 1972: Manipur and Tripura, until then Union Territories, became States; Meghalaya, until then an autonomous State within Assam, became a full State; Mizoram was constituted a Union Territory; and NEFA was renamed Arunachal Pradesh and constituted a Union Territory, its change taking effect from 20 January 1972. Statehood followed later for both of the Union Territories created in that round — for Arunachal Pradesh on 20 February 1987 as the twenty-fourth State, and for Mizoram on the same day as the twenty-third, after the Mizoram Peace Accord of 1986. Because Arunachal Pradesh dates its name and its separate existence from 1972, its golden jubilee fell in the year 2022, and the celebration was deliberately framed between 20 January, the anniversary of 1972, and 20 February, the anniversary of 1987 and the State's Statehood Day.

Current-affairs questions of this shape — a State, a celebrity and an appointment — look trivial and are not, because they are marked on one specific pairing and offer three plausible partners. The Commission builds them from a single news item of the twelve months or so before the paper, and the useful preparation is not to memorise celebrity names but to keep a running list of the year's anniversaries, appointments and campaigns with the sponsoring government attached to each. Notice also how the wrong options in this item were selected: every one of them is a north-eastern or Himalayan State whose accession or statehood is a dated event, so a candidate who tries to reason from the arithmetic of fifty years rather than recall the appointment can be led to Manipur with impeccable logic and still lose the mark. That is a general property of anniversary questions and a good reason to read the stem for the operative fact — here 'signed ... as the Brand Ambassador' — before scanning the options. The item is also a reminder that MPSC's current-affairs block does not confine itself to Maharashtra: national news, and particularly the north-east, appears regularly, and a Maharashtra-only news habit will not cover the paper.

• Arunachal Pradesh signed the actor Sanjay Dutt as brand ambassador for its golden jubilee; the media campaign he fronted was launched on 29 November 2021 at Mechukha in Shi-Yomi district, alongside Chief Minister Pema Khandu.
• The golden jubilee celebrations opened at Ziro in Lower Subansiri district on 20 January 2022 and closed at Itanagar on 20 February 2022, the State's Statehood Day, so that the celebration spanned the anniversaries of both of the State's constitutional milestones.
• The territory was called the North-East Frontier Agency until 1972; on 20 January 1972 it was renamed Arunachal Pradesh and constituted a Union Territory, which is the event whose fiftieth anniversary was being marked in 2022.
• Arunachal Pradesh became a full State of the Indian Union on 20 February 1987; Mizoram attained statehood at the same time, both having been Union Territories created in the 1972 reorganisation of the north-east.
• The North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 took effect on 21 January 1972 and made Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya full States, so 2022 was also a fiftieth statehood year for them — the anniversary alone cannot decide this question.

• Answering from the arithmetic of fifty years rather than from the reported appointment; Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya also completed fifty years of statehood in 2022, so the jubilee alone does not identify the State
• Confusing Arunachal Pradesh's two milestones — the 1972 renaming and Union Territory status, and the 1987 grant of statehood — and therefore dating the golden jubilee to the wrong year
• Assuming that a golden jubilee always counts from statehood; here it counts from the creation and naming of the Union Territory
• Treating MPSC's current-affairs block as a Maharashtra-only section, when national appointments, anniversaries and campaigns appear in it regularly

Current affairs in MPSC papers is examined through small, checkable pairings: which State launched which scheme, which person was appointed to which post, which body celebrated which anniversary, which award went to whom. The questions rarely require analysis, and they are almost never repeated in the same form, so the return on effort comes from method rather than volume — maintaining a month-by-month list of appointments, anniversaries, awards and campaigns for roughly the year and a half before the paper, with the sponsoring government or organisation written next to each entry. Anniversary questions of the kind seen here deserve particular attention because the distractors are usually States with a genuine claim to the same anniversary, so recall of the specific news item is the only reliable route. It is also worth noting the shape of the year: this paper was written in August 2022, and its current-affairs questions draw on events from roughly late 2021 to the middle of 2022.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Arunachal Pradesh celebrated its golden jubilee in 2022. Which event of 1972 was this the fiftieth anniversary of ?

  • (a)The grant of full statehood to Arunachal Pradesh
  • (b)The renaming of the North-East Frontier Agency as Arunachal Pradesh and its constitution as a Union Territory
  • (c)The creation of the North-East Frontier Agency out of Assam
  • (d)The shifting of the State capital to Itanagar

  Answer(b) The renaming of the North-East Frontier Agency as Arunachal Pradesh and its constitution as a Union Territory. The change took effect on 20 January 1972, which is why the golden jubilee celebrations of 2022 opened on 20 January at Ziro. Full statehood is a separate and later milestone, granted on 20 February 1987, when Arunachal Pradesh became the twenty-fourth State of the Union; the celebrations were closed on 20 February at Itanagar precisely because that date is the State's Statehood Day.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following States attained full statehood on 21 January 1972 under the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 ?

  • (a)Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim
  • (b)Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya
  • (c)Assam, Nagaland and Manipur
  • (d)Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya

  Answer(b) Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya. The Act took effect on 21 January 1972, raising the Union Territories of Manipur and Tripura and the autonomous State of Meghalaya to full statehood, while in the same round Mizoram and the renamed Arunachal Pradesh were constituted Union Territories. Nagaland is earlier, dating from 1963; Sikkim is later, joining the Union as the twenty-second State on 16 May 1975; and Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh became States only on 20 February 1987.