NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 136 of 150

Correct — C, statements 2 and 3 only. The south was the first part of the country to be effectively saturated with Aadhaar, and Andhra Pradesh together with the newly formed Telangana were at the very top — undivided Andhra Pradesh had been one of the earliest and most aggressive enrolment states, so statement 2 stands. The north-east lagged furthest behind, and Assam and Meghalaya were the two states at the bottom of the table by a wide margin; the gap was so persistent that even five years later, in 2020-21, Assam was still recorded at about 62 per cent saturation while Andhra Pradesh stood at about 96 per cent. That leaves statement 1, which the key rejects: Gujarat's coverage in 2015 had not crossed the 90 per cent mark that the statement claims.

• (a)2 only — Correctly drops statement 1, but also drops statement 3, which is right. The north-eastern shortfall was the best-known feature of the Aadhaar coverage map at the time, and Assam and Meghalaya were the two states named at the bottom of it.
• (b)1 and 3 only — Keeps the Gujarat claim, which the key treats as the false one, and then drops the southern-saturation claim, which is the best-supported statement in the whole item. It gets both of its decisions the wrong way round.
• (d)1, 2 and 3 — The default answer when a candidate cannot fault any statement. Statements 2 and 3 are indeed correct, but accepting statement 1 as well means accepting a specific numerical threshold for Gujarat that did not hold in 2015.

Aadhaar is a twelve-digit unique identity number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India against biometric and demographic data. Coverage is reported as saturation — the number of Aadhaar numbers issued in a state as a share of its projected population. Because enrolment was rolled out state by state through different agencies and at different speeds, saturation in the early years varied enormously across the country, and that unevenness is exactly what this question is testing.

Anchor this to the September 2016 exam. The framing and the wording strongly suggest the Aadhaar coverage discussion in the Economic Survey of 2015-16, whose chapter on spreading the Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile combination across the economy noted that more than three-quarters of the population and nearly all adults already held an Aadhaar number, alongside sharp state-to-state variation. On the present day, the picture in the statements has almost entirely dissolved — national saturation is now essentially complete for adults, and the north-eastern gap has largely closed, so this item is now a snapshot of 2015 rather than a description of India today. One honest caveat about the first statement: the precise Gujarat figure for 2015 could not be traced to a primary published table, so this card does not certify any particular percentage for Gujarat — it records that the official key marks that statement as incorrect and rests the reasoning on statements 2 and 3, which are well documented.

• Aadhaar saturation is measured as Aadhaar numbers issued against the projected population of a state.
• The southern states, including Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, were among the earliest to approach full coverage.
• Assam and Meghalaya remained the two lowest states for years; Assam was still at roughly 62 per cent saturation in 2020-21 against about 96 per cent for Andhra Pradesh.
• The Economic Survey of 2015-16 reported that more than 75 per cent of the population and close to 95 per cent of adults already held an Aadhaar number.
• The Aadhaar Act was passed in March 2016, some months before this exam, giving the programme its statutory basis.

• Marking the all-correct option when two of three statements check out; a single embedded number is usually where the item is defeated.
• Treating a 2015 coverage claim as a claim about today — the map in these statements no longer describes India.
• Confusing enrolment numbers with saturation percentage; a populous state can lead on the first and lag on the second.

Aadhaar appears in NDA as a governance current-affairs item, and the statement-based versions almost always hide the error inside a specific percentage or a specific state name rather than in the general trend.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Unique Identification Authority of India was given statutory status by

  • (a)an executive order of the Planning Commission
  • (b)the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016
  • (c)the Information Technology Act, 2000
  • (d)the Right to Information Act, 2005

  Answer(b) the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 — before that the authority functioned under an executive notification.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the abbreviation JAM, used in discussions of Indian welfare delivery, the three components stand for

  • (a)Jobs, Agriculture and Manufacturing
  • (b)Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile
  • (c)Justice, Access and Mobility
  • (d)Jal, Awas and Manrega

  Answer(b) Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile — the bank account, the identity number and the phone that together make direct benefit transfer possible.