Nivedita Karki, honoured with the Teelu Rauteli State Level Award 2023, is associated with which sport?
- (a)Race
- (b)Art and Yoga
- (c)Mountaineering
- (d)Boxing
Correct — D, Boxing.
The keyed answer is (d) Boxing. Nivedita Karki, of Pithoragarh, was one of the women honoured with the Teelu Rauteli State Level Award at the ceremony held on 8 August 2023 at the IRDT Auditorium, Survey Chowk, Dehradun, where Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami presented the awards.
Her citation is a boxing citation: she is recorded as having stayed away from her board examinations to compete and having won a gold medal at a tournament in Sweden.
The idea worth carrying away is about the shape of the question rather than the one name. A state honour like this is conferred on a batch of women in a single ceremony, each with her own citation, so the news item is not one fact but a table of name-to-field pairs.
Whoever read that report as '14 women were honoured' has nothing to answer with; whoever read it as 'Karki - boxing, Negi - the 20 km race, Chauhan - mountaineering' answers in three seconds.
Every wrong option here is a real field from the very same list, which is exactly why guessing from the theme of the state does not work.
- (a)Race — Not Karki's field. Mansi Negi was honoured at the same ceremony and her citation is for the 20 km race, so 'Race' is the correct answer to a question about Negi, not about Karki.
Race is a genuine citation from this list, so it cannot be eliminated on plausibility - only by holding the name-to-citation pair.
- (b)Art and Yoga — Not Karki's field. Shambhavi Murari was cited in the arts-and-yoga category in the same batch of honourees, so this option belongs to her.
It is in the list because the award is not a sports award at all - it covers literature and education, environment, women's employment and the arts alongside sport - and the paper is using that breadth against you.
- (c)Mountaineering — Not Karki's field. Amisha Chauhan was honoured for mountaineering in the same list.
Mountaineering is the trap option for anyone reasoning 'Uttarakhand, therefore mountains' instead of recalling the specific name, and the reasoning fails precisely because the setter had a real mountaineer available to put in the options.
The Teelu Rauteli State Level Award is Uttarakhand's award for women achievers, carrying the name of Teelu Rauteli, a Garhwali woman warrior of folk memory.
It goes to women and adolescent girls of the state for outstanding achievement in a field, and it is given with a cash purse and a certificate rather than as a lifetime title.
Because a group of women is honoured together in one ceremony and each receives a separate citation, the award functions in an exam as a list object: the examinable content is which name was cited for which field.
This sits in the Uttarakhand-specific current-affairs block of General Studies Paper-I, where state honours, their recipients and the reason each was honoured are fair game.
The list itself is not tidy, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than memorising a neat rule: at the August 2023 ceremony the fields did not come out one-per-woman.
The para-sports citation (खेल दिव्यांग वर्ग) is shared by Garima Joshi of Almora, Mohini Koranga of Bageshwar and Neelima Rai of Udham Singh Nagar, and the daring-deeds citation (साहसिक कार्य) is shared by Mamta of Uttarkashi and Kamla Arora of Nainital.
The plain sport citation (खेल) repeats as well: it appears for Mansi Negi, with the 20 km race named, for Divya Bhardwaj, with taekwondo named, and for Himani of Tehri.
Other citations name a single field - environment (पर्यावरण) for Preeti of Rudraprayag, literature and education for Manju Pandey, women's employment for Nutan Pant.
So a sentence like 'each awardee stands for a different field' is not safe to lean on. What is safe is the pairing of a particular name with a particular citation, which is all this question asks for.
The same ceremony also felicitated Anganwadi workers, which places the award with the state's women-and-child-development machinery rather than with a sports department.
- Nivedita Karki is from Pithoragarh and was honoured for boxing; her citation notes that she stayed away from her board examinations to compete and won a gold medal at a tournament in Sweden.
- The awards were presented on 8 August 2023 by Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami at the IRDT Auditorium, Survey Chowk, Dehradun.
- Fourteen women received the Teelu Rauteli State Level Award at that ceremony, and 35 Anganwadi workers were felicitated at the same event.
- The cash component for the Teelu Rauteli awardees was raised to Rs 51,000 (from Rs 31,000), and the Anganwadi workers' award was also raised to Rs 51,000 (from Rs 21,000).
- Three of this question's four options are the citations of other women in the same batch: Mansi Negi (the 20 km race), Shambhavi Murari (arts and yoga) and Amisha Chauhan of Dehradun (mountaineering in the differently-abled category, पर्वतारोहण दिव्यांग वर्ग).
- The citations in that batch repeat - para sports (खेल दिव्यांग वर्ग) appears for Garima Joshi, Mohini Koranga and Neelima Rai, and the daring-deeds citation (साहसिक कार्य) covers both Mamta and Kamla Arora - so the fields are not a set of fourteen distinct categories.
- The award is named after Teelu Rauteli, a Garhwali woman warrior remembered in the folk tradition of the Pauri Garhwal region.
All four fields come from the batch of women honoured at the 8 August 2023 ceremony in Dehradun. There is no option here that can be eliminated by knowing what the award is for - only by knowing which name goes with which citation.
- Answering 'Race' because it is a real citation from the same list. The association is genuine, but it is attached to the wrong person: the 20 km race is Mansi Negi's citation, not Nivedita Karki's.
- Answering 'Mountaineering' from the theme of the state rather than from the name. The setter anticipated it and had a mountaineer, Amisha Chauhan, on the same list to make the guess feel right.
- Treating '2023' in the stem as the year of the achievement instead of the round of the award; the ceremony itself was held in Dehradun on 8 August 2023.
- Learning the news item as a headcount - 'fourteen women and thirty-five Anganwadi workers' - which is the one thing about the report the question does not ask for.
- Assuming the fourteen citations are fourteen different fields and eliminating an option because 'that field is already taken'. The citations repeat, so that elimination can throw away the right answer.
The idea shows up as a name-to-field pairing drawn out of a single honours list. Here the stem supplies the honour, the year and the recipient and asks what she does;
the same material can be turned round, giving the field or the achievement and asking for the recipient's name, or asking what the award is given for, which state confers it, or which figure it is named after.
The distractor set is built from the other honourees in the same batch, which is what makes elimination by general knowledge of the state ineffective - each option is true of somebody.
The nearby variant to be ready for is the one that names two honourees and asks you to match them, since that punishes a candidate who learned only the single name that made the headlines.
MPPSC_2021_PRE_PaperI_Q432021Same task in the same words - a named person, and you must supply the sport. What differs is how the person is introduced and how you would have met her. The MPPSC item introduces Chinki Yadav as a player of the state, so recall comes from following her competitive career; here Nivedita Karki reaches the paper through a state award citation, so recall comes from having read an honours list. The answer in the MPPSC item is shooting, and note that shooting is not among the options here - the two questions share their form, not their content.
MPPSC_2021_PRE_PaperI_Q442021The companion item to the one above, and the identical frame again: Vivek Sagar, a player of the state, is associated with hockey. The same difference applies - a sportsperson known through play rather than through an award. Its usefulness is that it appeared beside another person-to-sport item in the same paper, which is a reminder that these are learned as pairs and that one recalled name does not carry the other.
MPPSC_2025_PRE_PaperI_Q842025The closest match on structure: a state government's own award, pinned to the year 2023, and a question that turns on who was on that year's list. The direction is reversed, which is the thing to notice. MPPSC gives the award and asks for the recipient's name; UKPSC gives the recipient and asks for her field. Preparing only one direction leaves you exposed to the other. The subject also differs - the Kishore Kumar Award is a Madhya Pradesh honour in cinema, while the Teelu Rauteli award covers many fields including sport.
MPPSC_2019_PRE_PaperI_Q612019Shares the wording 'associated with which sport' and the four-sport option set, but the subject is a venue rather than a person - Captain Roop Singh Stadium, which is cricket. It is worth seeing because it shows the same sentence frame being used for a different class of object, so the phrase in the stem tells you the format of the answer and nothing about what you need to have revised.
- practice - not a real PYQ
Mansi Negi, among the women honoured with the Teelu Rauteli State Level Award at the ceremony held in Dehradun in August 2023, was cited for achievement in which of the following?
- (a)Athletics
- (b)Boxing
- (c)Mountaineering
- (d)Taekwondo
Answera - Mansi Negi's citation in that batch is for the 20 km race, an athletics event.(b) is Nivedita Karki's citation, (c) is Amisha Chauhan's, and (d) is Divya Bhardwaj's; all three were honoured in the same batch, so each option is true of a different woman and none of them of Negi.
- practice - not a real PYQ
At the ceremony held at the IRDT Auditorium, Dehradun on 8 August 2023, at which the Teelu Rauteli State Level Award was presented, which other category of workers was also felicitated?
- (a)ASHA workers
- (b)Anganwadi workers
- (c)Gram Panchayat Development Officers
- (d)Forest guards
Answerb - 35 Anganwadi workers were felicitated at that ceremony, with their award amount raised to Rs 51,000.(a) ASHA workers are health volunteers under the National Health Mission and were not the category honoured at this event; (c) and (d) belong to the panchayati raj and forest establishments respectively and have no part in this ceremony.
The Anganwadi link is the clue that the award sits with the state's women and child development machinery.
- practice - not a real PYQ
The Teelu Rauteli State Level Award is conferred by the Government of which of the following states, on women achievers of that state?
- (a)Himachal Pradesh
- (b)Uttarakhand
- (c)Uttar Pradesh
- (d)Sikkim
Answerb - Uttarakhand. The award is a state honour of Uttarakhand, presented by its Chief Minister, and it carries the name of Teelu Rauteli, a woman warrior of Garhwali folk tradition; Garhwal lies in Uttarakhand, which is the internal check on this answer.(a), (c) and (d) are other states and this award is not part of their honours; a candidate who slips into Uttar Pradesh is being caught by the name alone, and the Garhwali association rules it out.