SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 17 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the option that correctly expresses the given sentence in passive voice. The shareholders will elect him a director.

(a)The shareholders have elected him a director.
(b)He will be elected as director by the shareholders.
(c)The shareholders elected him a director.
(d)He will be elected a director.

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The active verb is will elect, simple future, so the passive has to be will be elected — will + be + past participle, with the tense untouched.

The object him becomes the subject He, and the doer, the shareholders, moves into a by-phrase.

Option (b) is the one that does all three: "He will be elected as director by the shareholders."

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The shareholders have elected him a director. — Have elected is active and present perfect. The task is a change of voice only, and this both keeps the active pattern and loses the future tense of will elect.
(c)
The shareholders elected him a director. — Elected is active and simple past. It moves the sentence backwards in time instead of turning it around, and the shareholders stay in the subject slot.
(d)
He will be elected a director. — This is a well-formed passive in the right tense, but it drops the agent by the shareholders. A voice change has to carry the same information across, and the original names its doer.

Concept

Voice change is mechanical once you have named the tense.

Simple future active is will + verb, and its passive is will + be + past participle. Any other auxiliary pattern belongs to a different tense and is wrong whatever else it gets right.

This sentence also carries two objects, him and a director, so the passive promotes the person and keeps the second as a complement — which is why the phrasing after elected still reads naturally.

Option (d) is also a grammatical passive, and the key turns on the agent: the original names the shareholders, so the version that keeps them is the fuller transformation. SSC also lets a director surface as as director, since both follow elect in standard English.

Key facts

The passive of the simple future is will be plus the past participle.
In a voice change the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive one.
The doer moves into a by-phrase, and is retained when the active sentence names it.
Elect takes an object and a complement, as in elect him a director, and the complement survives the change.

Study next

Passive forms of each future tense, including future continuous and future perfectVoice change with verbs that take two objects, such as give, offer and electWhen the by-phrase may be dropped from a passive sentence

Common traps

Changing the tense while changing the voice, which the past and present-perfect options invite.
Accepting the agentless passive because it reads more smoothly than the full sentence.
Promoting the complement a director to subject instead of the object him.

This shift sets the transformation in both directions — into the passive here, and back into the active at English Q.7, where "The letter will be delivered by the postman tomorrow" becomes "The postman will deliver the letter tomorrow." Both items keep the same future tense on either side of the change.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.