SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 14 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 expresses the following sentence in active voice. The car was repaired by the mechanic.

(a)The mechanic is repairing the car.
(b)The mechanic repairs the car.
(c)The mechanic has repaired the car.
(d)The mechanic repaired the car.

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Turning a passive into an active, the agent in the by-phrase becomes the subject and the tense stays where it was.

was repaired is was plus a past participle with no being, which is the simple past passive. So the active verb must be the simple past: repaired.

The mechanic (the agent) moves to the front and the car (the old subject) becomes the object:
The mechanic repaired the car — option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The mechanic is repairing the car. — is repairing is the present continuous. Converting the voice never licenses a change of tense, and was repaired reports a finished past event, not one in progress now.
(b)
The mechanic repairs the car. — repairs is the simple present and reads as a habit or a general truth. The original reports one completed repair in the past.
(c)
The mechanic has repaired the car. — has repaired is the present perfect, which ties the repair to the present moment. The passive was repaired carries no such link and has no has or had in it to convert.

Concept

Voice conversion is a mechanical swap once the tense is pinned down.

Passive frame: object + be in the original tense + past participle + by + agent.
Active frame: agent + verb in the same tense + object.

The be verb carries the tense, so read it first: was repaired is simple past, was being repaired is past continuous, had been repaired is past perfect.

Then drop by, promote the agent to subject and demote the old subject to object.

The sentence is deliberately short, so the only thing that can go wrong is the verb. Every option names the same agent and the same object and differs from the rest only in tense.

Key facts

Simple past passive is was or were plus a past participle, and its active form is the simple past.
In voice conversion the tense never changes, only the arrangement of the parts.
The agent introduced by by becomes the subject of the active sentence.

Study next

Past continuous passive: was or were being plus a past participleConverting passive questions, as in By whom was grammar taught to youModal passives such as must be done and could have been sent

Common traps

Shifting into a present tense because the active sentence sounds more natural that way
Carrying by across into the active sentence
Making the old subject the new subject, which reverses who did what to whom

SSC asks the conversion in both directions. This shift asks the passive of a past continuous sentence at English Q.17, and 12 Sep 2024, 12:30 runs the same simple-past conversion at English Q.4 with The drug pedlar was arrested by the narcotics team.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.