SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 21 of 99

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 10 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 Article in the fundamental duty applies, when a construction worker takes his 8- year son to the site rather than sending him to school?

(a)Article 51A (h)
(b)Article 51A (i)
(c)Article 51A (j)
(d)Article 51A (k)

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Article 51A(k) makes it a fundamental duty of a parent or guardian to provide opportunities for education to his child or ward between the ages of six and fourteen years.

An eight-year-old taken to a construction site instead of to school sits squarely inside that age band, so this is the clause the situation engages.

It is also the only duty addressed to a parent rather than to a citizen at large: option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Article 51A (h) — 51A(h) is the duty to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. It describes how a citizen should think, not what a parent owes a child.
(b)
Article 51A (i) — 51A(i) is the duty to safeguard public property and to abjure violence. No public property is damaged and no violence is done by taking a child to a work site.
(c)
Article 51A (j) — 51A(j) is the duty to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity. It is a general exhortation, not a specific parental obligation.

Concept

Fundamental Duties sit in Part IVA, Article 51A, inserted by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976 on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee.

The original list ran from clause (a) to clause (j). Clause (k) was added later, by the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2002 — the same amendment that inserted Article 21A, the right to free and compulsory education for children aged six to fourteen.

So (k) is the newest of the eleven duties, and the one that reads as an obligation to a particular person rather than to the nation.

SSC writes these as everyday situations rather than as clause lists.

Read the situation for who is being wronged — a child of school age here — and the clause follows without needing the full list in order.

Key facts

Fundamental Duties are in Part IVA, Article 51A of the Constitution.
The 42nd Amendment Act, 1976 inserted the original ten duties.
The 86th Amendment Act, 2002 added Article 51A(k), the parent's duty to provide education to a child aged six to fourteen.
The same 86th Amendment inserted Article 21A, the right to free and compulsory education.

Study next

The eleven Fundamental Duties, clause by clauseArticle 21A and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009The 42nd and 86th Constitutional Amendment Acts

Common traps

Assuming all eleven duties arrived with the 42nd Amendment, when clause (k) came in 2002.
Confusing the parental duty in 51A(k) with the child's right in Article 21A.

SSC builds a scene and asks for the clause — the national flag used as a covering for a desk is put to Article 51A(a) at 23 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.6, and students writing on a monument to the duty to safeguard public property at 17 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.1.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.