SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 1 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.

Lata Mangeshkar was honoured with the Bharat Ratna in the year ________.

(a)2004
(b)2003
(c)2001
(d)2002

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Lata Mangeshkar was honoured with the Bharat Ratna in 2001, the highest civilian award of the country.

By then she had already held the Padma Bhushan (1969), the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1989) and the Padma Vibhushan (1999), so the Bharat Ratna sat at the top of a list decades in the making.

Ustad Bismillah Khan was named in the same year, which makes 2001 the year to fix → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
2004 — No Bharat Ratna was conferred in 2004. After the 2001 awards the honour went unawarded until 2008, so this year carries no recipient at all to attach her to.
(b)
2003 — 2003 produced no Bharat Ratna either. The award skips years freely, and the one year to remember here is 2001, when both Lata Mangeshkar and Ustad Bismillah Khan were named.
(d)
2002 — The year candidates confuse is 1999, when she received the Padma Vibhushan. The Bharat Ratna came two years after that, in 2001, and not in 2002.

Concept

India's civilian honours sit in a fixed order — Bharat Ratna first, then Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri.

The Bharat Ratna is recommended by the Prime Minister to the President, and no more than three people may be named in a year. It is not an annual award: whole years pass with nobody on the list.

That is exactly why SSC likes it. The full roll of recipients is short and closed, so the same few dozen names can be asked by year, by field or by name.

The item wants the year of the Bharat Ratna, not the year of her first national honour. Mangeshkar collected civilian awards across four decades, and three of the four options are simply years in which nobody received the Bharat Ratna.

Key facts

Lata Mangeshkar received the Bharat Ratna in 2001.
Ustad Bismillah Khan was also named for the Bharat Ratna in 2001.
Her earlier honours include the Padma Bhushan (1969), the Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1989) and the Padma Vibhushan (1999).
M.S. Subbulakshmi, honoured in 1998, was the first musician to receive the Bharat Ratna.

Study next

Bharat Ratna recipients from the arts and the year of eachRules of the Padma awards: the three ranks and the annual capDadasaheb Phalke Award winners of the 1980s and 1990s

Common traps

Reading 1999, her Padma Vibhushan year, or 1989, her Dadasaheb Phalke year, as the Bharat Ratna year.
Assuming the Bharat Ratna is announced every year, so that 2002, 2003 and 2004 look like live options.

SSC works this roll from both ends. 09 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.3 hands you the year 2001 and asks which award Lata Mangeshkar won — the exact mirror of this item.

The same short list supplies 10 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.22 (Ravi Shankar, 1999), 18 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.2 (Bhimsen Joshi, 2008) and 26 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.22 (Bhupen Hazarika, 2019).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.