SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 7 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.

The Atal Innovation Mission was launched in year ________.

(a)2014
(b)2016
(c)2021
(d)2004

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The Atal Innovation Mission was announced in the Union Budget speech of 2015-16 as a body to be set up inside NITI Aayog, and it was established the following year, in 2016.

It is the government's flagship innovation and entrepreneurship programme, named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and it runs school-level Atal Tinkering Labs alongside Atal Incubation Centres for start-ups.

The year the stem asks for is 2016, option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
2014 — NITI Aayog itself did not exist in 2014. It replaced the Planning Commission on 1 January 2015, so a mission housed inside it cannot date from the year before.
(c)
2021 — By 2021 Atal Tinkering Labs were already running in schools across the country. The date is far too late for a mission whose components were operating years earlier.
(d)
2004 — 2004 predates NITI Aayog by more than a decade and predates the naming of the mission after Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was Prime Minister until 2004 and died in 2018.

Concept

The Atal Innovation Mission sits inside NITI Aayog and works at two levels rather than one.

At school level, Atal Tinkering Labs put tools, electronics and 3D printing into government and private schools so that students build things rather than only read about them.

At enterprise level, Atal Incubation Centres and the Atal New India Challenges support start-ups and applied problem-solving. SSC asks such schemes by launch year, parent ministry or body, and component names, so learn all three together.

Budget announcement and formal establishment fall in different years for many schemes, and that gap is exactly where SSC sets its options. Here the announcement came in the 2015-16 Budget and the mission itself in 2016.

Key facts

The Atal Innovation Mission operates under NITI Aayog, not under a line ministry.
It is named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Atal Tinkering Labs are its school-level component and Atal Incubation Centres its start-up component.
NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission on 1 January 2015.

Study next

NITI Aayog, its structure and the bodies housed within itCentral government innovation and start-up schemes and their launch yearsSchemes named after former Prime Ministers and the year each began

Common traps

Confusing the Budget announcement year with the year the mission was actually set up.
Placing the mission in 2014 by association with the change of government rather than with NITI Aayog's own start date.
Mixing the Atal Innovation Mission up with other Atal-named schemes in pensions or urban renewal.

NITI Aayog is a standing GA subject in its own right, and SSC also asks it through its published reports, as at 11 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.16 on multidimensional poverty by state.

For a scheme, expect the year, the parent body or the component name as the blank.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.