Who among the following was not acted as the Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, P. K. Noronha. No Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh has held office under the name 'P. K. Noronha'. The Noronha closely tied to the post is R. P. Noronha (Ronald Piedade Noronha), one of the state's longest-serving Chief Secretaries and author of the well-known service memoir 'A Tale Told by an Idiot' (1976). The option's initials 'P. K.' do not match him — that mismatch is the trap. The other three names each did serve as Chief Secretary of MP, so the one who did NOT is P. K. Noronha.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) He served as a Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, so he is not the odd one out in a 'who was not' question.  (b) He too held the office of Chief Secretary of MP, so he is not the correct 'was not' answer.  (c) He also served as Chief Secretary of MP; the question turns instead on the mismatched initials of the Noronha option.

Concept: The Chief Secretary is the administrative head of a state government — the senior-most civil servant (an IAS officer), secretary to the state Cabinet, and head of the state secretariat. In Madhya Pradesh the office sits in Vallabh Bhawan, Bhopal. Questions like this test recall of the state's list of Chief Secretaries; here the trick is a near-identical surname (Noronha) carried by the wrong initials.

State PCS 2018 Q66 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2018 Q66 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer