Parts of the following sentence have been given as options. Select the option that contains an error. Deepak is studying B.tech. at IIT Delhi to become the engineer.

Correct — C. The trigger is the article in the engineer. After become, a profession works as a subject complement, and a complement that merely says what kind of person someone will be takes a or an: to become an engineer.

The points at one engineer the reader can already identify, and nothing earlier in the sentence identifies one. So option (c) carries the error.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  B.tech. at IIT Delhi — B.tech. at IIT Delhi is sound: a course you are studying takes no article — studying B.tech., studying law — and at is the normal preposition before an institution's name. The lowercase printing is the paper's own.
• (b)
  Deepak is studying — Deepak is studying is a correct present continuous — a singular subject with is plus the -ing form, describing a course of study still under way.
• (d)
  to become — to become is an infinitive of purpose answering why he is studying. The form is right here; what follows it is where the article goes wrong.

SSC's split-sentence error item hands you four chunks of one sentence and asks which chunk is wrong. Read the sentence whole first, then test each chunk against a rule you can name.

An article is what goes wrong here, so check every a, an and the in the sentence before weighing anything else. The rule that decides this sentence is first mention takes a or an: a noun the reader has not met, and which only classifies someone, is indefinite.

The is for a noun already pinned down — by an earlier mention, by a phrase that follows, or because only one of the thing exists. None of those holds for engineer here.

Key facts

• After become, work as or be, a profession noun that classifies a person takes a or an: she became a doctor.
• The signals a noun the reader can already identify, from an earlier mention or from a phrase that pins it down.
• At is the preposition for study at a named institution: at IIT Delhi, at Delhi University.

Common traps

• Marking Deepak is studying because the sentence gives no time expression, when the present continuous needs none.
• Reading the lowercase B.tech. as the planted error.
• Testing only the words that look unusual instead of checking every article in the sentence.

No directly related past PYQ was found.