SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 12 September 2025, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 11 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 11 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Find the part of the sentence that contains an error: What renders the draft legislation particularly contentious is not its proposed realignment of fiscal powers per se, (1)/ but that it presumes, without empirical substantiation, (2)/ a fiscal equivalence among states whose developmental baselines are (3)/ incommensurable by any normative metric. (4)

(a)(1)
(b)(2)
(c)(3)
(d)(4)

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The sentence turns on the pair not ... but, and the two things it contrasts must have the same grammatical shape.

After not comes a noun phrase: its proposed realignment of fiscal powers. After but comes a clause: that it presumes, with a subject and verb of its own.

Part (2) breaks the pattern. Keeping the noun-phrase shape repairs it: "but its presumption, without empirical substantiation, of a fiscal equivalence" — option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
(1) — Part (1) is sound on its own: the What-clause subject takes is, and per se means 'in itself'. It sets up the noun-phrase pattern that part (2) then abandons.
(c)
(3) — among suits many states, whose correctly refers back to states, and baselines are agrees in the plural. Nothing here needs repair.
(d)
(4) — incommensurable means having no common standard of measurement, which is exactly the claim being made about the states' baselines. By any normative metric completes it.

Concept

Correlative pairs — not ... but, not only ... but also, either ... or, neither ... nor, both ... and — join two elements of the same grammatical kind: noun phrase with noun phrase, clause with clause.

The test is mechanical. Read the words straight after the first half of the pair, then straight after the second half, and compare their shapes.

Here: not + its proposed realignment (a noun phrase), but + that it presumes (a clause). The shapes differ, so one half has to change.

The mismatch could also be cured from the other side, by recasting part (1) as a clause: "not that it proposes a realignment ... but that it presumes ...". The key places the error in part (2), where the sentence departs from the shape it set up first.

Key facts

Correlative conjunctions join elements of the same grammatical form.
Per se means 'in itself' or 'as such'.
Incommensurable means having no common standard by which two things can be measured.

Study next

Parallelism with not only ... but also, and the placement of not onlyParallel lists: to read, to write and to speak, not to read, writing and to speakNoun-phrase and clause complements after is in long academic sentences

Common traps

Hunting for an agreement or preposition slip in a long sentence and missing a structural fault
Blaming part (1), where the pattern is set, instead of part (2), where it breaks

The same pairing rule decides 24 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.16, where the keyed repair moves not only to sit directly before by giving hints, so each half of not only ... but also is followed by a prepositional phrase.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Error spotting — all 69 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.