SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 9 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.

Which of the following States has declared a social security scheme for registered newspaper hawkers in the State in 2021 considering the losses they faced during the pandemic and that they are a part of the unorganised sector?

(a)Maharashtra
(b)Gujarat
(c)Tamil Nadu
(d)Odisha

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Odisha announced the scheme in 2021, extending social security to newspaper hawkers registered with the Odisha Unorganised Workers Social Security Board.

The cover is the board's standard package: Rs 2 lakh to the family on accidental death, Rs 1 lakh on natural death, and Rs 1.5 lakh for permanent disability caused by an accident.

The pandemic is the reason the stem gives, and the state added a one-time payment of Rs 3,000 per hawker, released in two phases from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Maharashtra — Maharashtra is not the state in this announcement. It came from Odisha's Chief Minister and applies to hawkers on the Odisha board's register.
(b)
Gujarat — Gujarat is a plausible-sounding decoy. The benefit is tied to registration with the Odisha board, so it does not reach hawkers in any other state.
(c)
Tamil Nadu — Tamil Nadu runs welfare boards of its own for unorganised workers, but the 2021 newspaper-hawker announcement this stem describes was Odisha's.

Concept

Most Indian workers are in the unorganised sector — no written contract, no employer provident fund, no gratuity, no group insurance.

States close that gap through welfare boards. A worker registers with the board, and the board pays fixed sums on death, disability, childbirth or funeral expenses.

That is the structure here: the scheme is not cash for everyone who sells a newspaper, it is a defined benefit for hawkers on the register. Registration is the condition SSC likes to test.

Current-affairs items like this age. The state, the year and the registering board are the stable facts. Benefit amounts can be revised, so treat the rupee figures as of the 2021 announcement.

Key facts

Odisha announced a social security scheme for newspaper hawkers in 2021.
The benefit goes to hawkers registered with the Odisha Unorganised Workers Social Security Board.
The scheme pays Rs 2 lakh on accidental death and Rs 1 lakh on natural death.
The state also paid Rs 3,000 per hawker in two phases from the Chief Minister's Relief Fund.

Study next

e-Shram portal — the national database of unorganised workers launched in 2021Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan pension scheme for unorganised workersCode on Social Security, 2020 and its unorganised-worker provisions

Common traps

Guessing the largest or richest state for any welfare announcement.
Confusing this Odisha scheme with the central e-Shram registration drive of the same year.

State-scheme current affairs are asked by beneficiary group: the stem names the group and asks for the state.

The corpus works the unorganised-sector family hard — the e-Shram portal at 13 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.24 and Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan at 23 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.10.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.