SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 3 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 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 illustrations is related to chloroplasts?

(a)c
(b)b
(c)d
(d)a

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Option (a) names illustration c, and illustration c is the chloroplast.

That picture shows a lens-shaped body with a double outer envelope, cut away to reveal stacks of coin-like discs inside. The stacks are the grana, piles of thylakoid discs sitting in the stroma.

No other picture in the strip has a double membrane enclosing stacked discs, which is the diagnostic feature of a chloroplast.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
b — Option (b) points to illustration b, a four-armed X-shaped outline filled with cross-hatching. It has no double envelope and no stacked discs.
(c)
d — Option (c) points to illustration d, a sheet of many polygonal cells with "Nucleus" and "Cells" labelled on it. That is a tissue of whole cells, not one organelle.
(d)
a — Option (d) points to illustration a, a star-shaped cell with several radiating arms around a central nucleus. Again a whole cell, and a chloroplast has no such arms.

Concept

The chloroplast is the plant organelle where photosynthesis happens. Two envelope membranes enclose a fluid called the stroma, and inside the stroma lie flattened sacs called thylakoids, stacked into piles called grana.

The light reactions run on the thylakoid membranes, which hold the chlorophyll. The carbon-fixing reactions run in the stroma.

That layout is exactly what the textbook drawing shows, so a picture question reduces to spotting stacked discs inside a double membrane.

The option letters and the picture labels are both a to d, and they do not line up: the keyed option (a) is the one whose text reads "c".

Read what the option says, not the letter it sits on.

Key facts

A chloroplast is bounded by two membranes, together called the chloroplast envelope.
Stacks of thylakoid discs inside a chloroplast are called grana (singular granum).
The fluid surrounding the grana inside a chloroplast is the stroma.
Chlorophyll sits in the thylakoid membranes, where the light reactions of photosynthesis take place.

Study next

Structure of the mitochondrion: cristae, matrix and the double membraneLight reactions on thylakoid membranes and the Calvin cycle in the stromaPlastid types: chloroplast, chromoplast and leucoplast

Common traps

Matching the option letter to the picture label carrying the same letter instead of reading the option text.
Choosing a picture of a tissue or a whole cell when the stem asks about an organelle.

The same picture format is used for the mitochondrion at 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, General Awareness Q.9, which asks which illustration shows the mitochondrion's structural details — and there too the option text is a bare letter, not a description.

Learn the two double-membrane organelles by their drawings: stacked discs mean chloroplast, infolded cristae mean mitochondrion.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.