Which State has signed Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt as the Brand Ambassador for its Golden Jubilee celebrations ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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.  (b) 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.  (c) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2022 Q81 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q81 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer