Which Act was passed by the British Parliament in the year 1773 AD to regulate the activities of the East India Company?

Correct — D. The Regulating Act of 1773 was the first law by which the British Parliament took charge of how the East India Company governed its Indian territories.
Until then the Company answered only to its own shareholders.

It created the office of Governor-General of Bengal — Warren Hastings was the first — gave him an Executive Council of four, and provided for a Supreme Court at Fort William, Calcutta, which opened in 1774.

The date in the stem, 1773, is the whole discriminator → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Pitt’s India Act — Pitt's India Act came in 1784, eleven years later, and set up the Board of Control in London to supervise the Company's political affairs. Right subject, wrong year.
• (b)
  Age of Consent Act — The Age of Consent Act, 1891 raised the age of consent for girls from ten to twelve across British India. It is late-nineteenth-century social legislation, not a law about the Company's government.
• (c)
  Indian Slavery Act — The Indian Slavery Act, 1843 (Act V of 1843) outlawed the buying and selling of persons in Company territory. Again a social measure, and seventy years after the date the stem gives.

British rule in India was assembled by a run of parliamentary Acts, each one tightening the leash on a trading company that had acquired a kingdom.

The Regulating Act of 1773 is the first link in that chain. Parliament moved because the Company was near bankruptcy and asking the government for a loan, while reports of its servants' conduct in Bengal had become a political scandal in London.

The Act did not take India away from the Company. It made the Company answerable — Bengal was now run by a Governor-General in Council, Madras and Bombay were subordinated to Bengal in matters of war and peace, and a Crown court sat at Calcutta.

Key facts

• The Regulating Act of 1773 created the office of Governor-General of Bengal, first held by Warren Hastings.
• It provided for a Supreme Court at Fort William, Calcutta, which was established in 1774.
• The Governor-General was given an Executive Council of four members and could be outvoted by it.
• Pitt's India Act of 1784 followed, creating the Board of Control in London over the Company's political affairs.

Common traps

• Reading the year as 1774. That is when the Supreme Court at Calcutta was set up, not when the Act was passed.
• Confusing the Governor-General of Bengal, created in 1773, with the Governor-General of India, a title the Charter Act of 1833 created.
• Assuming 1773 handed India to the Crown. That came with the Government of India Act 1858.

No directly related past PYQ was found.