SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 10 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 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 of the following is the first Indian woman Grandmaster in Chess?

(a)Tania Sachdev
(b)S Vijayalakshmi
(c)Harika Dronavalli
(d)R Vaishali

Answer

Why

Correct — B. S Vijayalakshmi — Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi — took the Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title in 2001, the first Indian woman to hold it.

She was also the first Indian woman to earn the International Master (IM) title, which is an open title rather than a women's one.

In Indian general-knowledge usage 'first Indian woman Grandmaster' means that 2001 WGM title, and on that reading both firsts belong to option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Tania Sachdev — Tania Sachdev holds women's and open titles too, but she earned them later. The question asks who was first, not who holds the title.
(c)
Harika Dronavalli — Dronavalli Harika holds the full Grandmaster title, earned in 2011 — she was the second Indian woman to reach it, so she is not the first on either reading of the question.
(d)
R Vaishali — R Vaishali belongs to the current generation of Indian women grandmasters, more than two decades after the 2001 titles this question turns on.

Concept

FIDE runs two parallel ladders of titles.

The open titles — GM, IM, FM — are available to any player. The women's titles — WGM, WIM, WFM — are restricted to women and carry lower rating and norm requirements.

So the phrase 'woman Grandmaster' is ambiguous in ordinary speech: it can mean the WGM title, or a woman who has earned the open GM title. Knowing that the two ladders exist is what makes questions like this decidable rather than a coin toss.

Worth holding precisely, because the two readings have different answers. Koneru Humpy earned the open Grandmaster title in 2002, the first Indian woman to do so — and she is not among the four names offered here.

Vijayalakshmi's 2001 title is the Woman Grandmaster title, and that is the reading this key follows.

Key facts

S Vijayalakshmi became the first Indian woman to earn the Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title, in 2001.
She was also the first Indian woman to earn the International Master (IM) title.
Koneru Humpy became the first Indian woman to earn the open Grandmaster title, in 2002.
Dronavalli Harika earned the Grandmaster title in 2011, the second Indian woman to do so.

Study next

FIDE title requirements: norms and rating floors for GM, IM and WGMIndian women grandmasters and the year each took the titleIndia at the Chess Olympiad

Common traps

Treating WGM and GM as the same title when they have different requirements.
Picking the most famous name you can recall instead of the earliest title year.

Chess is set both as a person-to-sport link — Bhakti Pradeep Kulkarni on 19 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.15 — and as event recall, such as Koneru Humpy's silver at Almaty in January 2023 on 25 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.5.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.