UKPSC Prelims 2024 Q90: “Prawasi Bharatiya Diwas” (PBD) or NRI Day is celebrated in

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2024 Q90?

B. Correct — B, January 9. The keyed answer is (b) **January 9**. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is not a date someone picked for convenience — it is anchored to an event. On 9 January 1915 Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, and the Ministry of External Affairs describes him on exactly this ground as the greatest Pravasi. The observance was instituted in 2003, and the flagship Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention has since been the Government of India's set-piece engagement with the overseas Indian community, with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award conferred on selected members of the diaspora at it. The idea worth carrying away is the method, not the number: **Indian commemorative days are typically pinned to a person's birth or death anniversary or to a specific historical event**, so if you can recover the anchor you can reconstruct the date under exam pressure instead of trying to hold four bare numbers in memory. Recover 'Gandhi came home from South Africa in January 1915' and the 9 follows. One honest wrinkle: the stem's 'every year' describes the observance, and the MEA's own page notes that since 2015 the format was revised so that the PBD Convention is held once every two years, with theme-based PBD conferences in the intervening period. That does not change the date, and a candidate who starts second-guessing the whole item because of the cadence talks himself out of a correct answer.

UKPSC Prelims 2024 General Studies Paper-I · Question 90 of 147

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per UKPSC's provisional answer key.

Answers from UKPSC's provisional answer key. The Commission publishes a provisional key for UKPSC Prelims 2024 and invites objections before issuing a final key. Every answer shown here is the Commission's own provisional answer (key PDF), not our derivation. If the final key changes an answer, this page is updated to match.

“Prawasi Bharatiya Diwas” (PBD) or NRI Day is celebrated in India every year on which date?

(a)January 19
(b)January 9
(c)January 11
(d)January 12

Answer

Why

Correct — B, January 9.

The keyed answer is (b) January 9. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is not a date someone picked for convenience — it is anchored to an event. On 9 January 1915 Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, and the Ministry of External Affairs describes him on exactly this ground as the greatest Pravasi.

The observance was instituted in 2003, and the flagship Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention has since been the Government of India's set-piece engagement with the overseas Indian community, with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award conferred on selected members of the diaspora at it.

The idea worth carrying away is the method, not the number: Indian commemorative days are typically pinned to a person's birth or death anniversary or to a specific historical event, so if you can recover the anchor you can reconstruct the date under exam pressure instead of trying to hold four bare numbers in memory.

Recover 'Gandhi came home from South Africa in January 1915' and the 9 follows.

One honest wrinkle: the stem's 'every year' describes the observance, and the MEA's own page notes that since 2015 the format was revised so that the PBD Convention is held once every two years, with theme-based PBD conferences in the intervening period.

That does not change the date, and a candidate who starts second-guessing the whole item because of the cadence talks himself out of a correct answer.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
January 19 — January 19 is a bare-number slip rather than a rival diaspora date: a candidate working from the digit 9 alone, instead of from Gandhi's return, can surface it as 19.
The convention itself has been held 7 to 9 January (2015, 2017) and 8 to 10 January (2023, 2025), with 2019 at Varanasi an exception at 21 to 23 January — windows that sit clear of the 19th.
What 19 January does mark is NDRF Raising Day, the anniversary of the raising of the National Disaster Response Force on 19 January 2006 — a separate observance altogether.
The structural clue points the same way: three of these four options sit inside a tight early-January band and one does not, and the outlier is the one you can drop first.
(c)
January 11 — Wrong for PBD, but a real date to know: 11 January 1966 is the day Lal Bahadur Shastri died at Tashkent, the day after signing the Tashkent Declaration with Pakistan's President Ayub Khan.
That is what makes it tempting — a heavily taught January date sitting two days after the answer, close enough that a candidate working from a hazy sense of 'early January' will feel it fits. The Shastri anniversary is not the PBD observance; the observance date is fixed at the 9th.
(d)
January 12 — 12 January is the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, born in 1863, and is observed in India as National Youth Day. That is the question this option answers.
The pull here is thematic rather than numerical: Vivekananda's 1893 Chicago address makes him the other figure students associate with India projecting itself abroad, so 'Indians overseas' can misfire onto his date. Keep the two anchors separate — Vivekananda going out to the world on the 12th, Gandhi coming back to India on the 9th.

Concept

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is the Government of India's annual observance for the overseas Indian community, fixed on 9 January because Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa on that date in 1915.

It began in 2003, and its flagship event is the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention, at which the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award — the recognition given to members of the diaspora for their contribution in various fields, in India and abroad — is conferred.

The underlying principle is general: a named Diwas in India is almost never an arbitrary date, and the reliable way to hold it is to hold the event it commemorates.

This sits in the diaspora-engagement corner of India's external relations, handled by the Ministry of External Affairs.

The institutional history is worth a line because it explains why the topic exists at all: a High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora, chaired by L. M. Singhvi, examined the relationship between India and its overseas community and reported in the early 2000s, and PBD was instituted in 2003 in that wake.

A separate Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs handled the portfolio for a period before it was merged back into the Ministry of External Affairs in January 2016.

For a state-services candidate the value is not the ministry chart but the pattern of national days and their anchors, which is checkable, finite, and answerable in seconds if learnt by anchor.

Key facts

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is observed on 9 January.
The date marks Mahatma Gandhi's return to India from South Africa on 9 January 1915; the MEA describes him as the greatest Pravasi.
The observance began in 2003.
Since 2015 the format was revised: the PBD Convention is held once every two years, with theme-based PBD conferences in the intervening period.
The Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award is conferred at the convention on selected members of the overseas Indian community.
Recent conventions include Indore in 2023 (8-10 January) and Bhubaneswar in 2025 (8-10 January); the 2019 convention at Varanasi was held 21-23 January.
The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs was merged into the Ministry of External Affairs in January 2016.
12 January is the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda (born 1863) and is observed as National Youth Day.
11 January 1966 is the death anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri, at Tashkent.
19 January is NDRF Raising Day, marking the raising of the National Disaster Response Force on 19 January 2006.

The January cluster, and what each date is anchored to

9 January→Pravasi Bharatiya Divas — Gandhi's return from South Africa, 1915

11 January→Death anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri (Tashkent, 1966)

12 January→National Youth Day — birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda (1863)

15 January→Army Day — K. M. Cariappa took over as the first Indian Commander-in-Chief, 1949

19 January→NDRF Raising Day — National Disaster Response Force raised, 2006

23 January→Parakram Diwas — birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose

24 January→Uttar Pradesh Day; also National Girl Child Day

25 January→National Voters' Day — foundation of the Election Commission of India, 1950

26 January→Republic Day — the Constitution came into force, 1950

30 January→Martyrs' Day — assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, 1948

January is crowded, and the wrong picks in this question come from inside the crowd — 11 and 12 are the near-neighbours, while 19 sits further out as NDRF Raising Day. Learn the right-hand column; the left-hand column then reconstructs itself.

Study next

Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award — what it recognises and who receives itHigh Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora (L. M. Singhvi) and its recommendationsOverseas Citizen of India (OCI) status and the merger of the PIO card scheme into OCIMinistry of Overseas Indian Affairs and its 2016 merger into the Ministry of External AffairsThe full calendar of national days by anchor: National Youth Day, Army Day, Parakram Diwas, National Voters' Day, Constitution Day, Janjatiya Gaurav DivasState foundation days, including Uttarakhand's on 9 November

Common traps

Reading the multi-day convention as the observance. The PBD Convention runs across two or three days — 7 to 9 January in 2015 and 2017, 8 to 10 January in 2023 and 2025, and 21 to 23 January at Varanasi in 2019 — while the observance itself is a single fixed date. A candidate who has stored 'PBD is a few days in January' rather than 'PBD is 9 January' has nothing left to choose between the January options with.
Digit transposition. 9 becomes 19 the moment you are working from a bare number instead of from Gandhi's return, which is how a candidate lands on option (a).
Cross-wiring Vivekananda with the diaspora. Both ideas involve Indians and the wider world, so 12 January can surface first. Keep the two anchors separate.
Over-thinking the word 'every year'. Since 2015 the convention has been biennial with theme-based conferences in between, and a candidate who knows that half-fact may conclude the item is defective and hunt for a different date. The observance date is 9 January regardless of convention cadence.

Among the questions cited below, this idea takes two shapes. The plainest is the one here — name the observance, choose the date, with distractors drawn from the same month so that elimination by month does not work.

The reverse is also asked: give the date and ask which event or person it commemorates.

It could also be asked as the reason behind the date rather than the date itself, which is where the Gandhi-returned-from-South-Africa anchor pays off directly.

The same topic also supports questions on the award conferred at the convention and on the ministry that runs the diaspora portfolio, so learning PBD as a small cluster — date, anchor, award, ministry — covers more ground than learning the date alone.

Related PYQs

UPPSC_2022_PRE_GSI_Q1472022

The same device — name a Diwas, pick its date from four options in one month — and the same defence, which is to recover the anchoring event rather than the number. What differs is the scale and the anchor: Uttar Pradesh Day, keyed to 24 January, is a state foundation observance tied to the state's own formation history, while Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is a national observance of the Ministry of External Affairs tied to Gandhi's 1915 return from South Africa. A state day and a national diaspora day are learnt from different lists.

MPPSC_2025_PRE_PaperI_Q812025

This one runs the same logic backwards, and that is why it is worth pairing with our question. It supplies the date — 15 November for Janjatiya Gaurav Divas — and asks which tribal leader's birth anniversary it commemorates, whereas UKPSC supplies the name and asks for the date. The shared skill is the anchor; the difference is direction of travel, and a candidate who has learnt only date-to-name will stall when the paper asks name-to-date, or the reverse.

MPPSC_2021_PRE_PaperI_Q172021

Another name-to-date item, keyed to 31 August for Vimukta Jati Day, and useful here as a contrast in construction. Its four options are spread across different months, so a candidate who remembers only the season can still eliminate; ours confines all four options to January, which removes that shortcut and forces exact recall. What differs beyond construction is the domain — a Madhya Pradesh observance concerning denotified communities against a national observance for the overseas Indian community — so the two are learnt from different lists even though the skill tested is the same.

CAPF_GAI_2022_Q832022

Same shape again — which date is this day observed on — with distractors placed in different months. The difference is the register: World Wetland Day, keyed to 2 February, is an international observance connected to the Ramsar Convention, so it belongs to the environment list and its anchor is a treaty rather than a person. PBD's anchor is biographical. Grouping observances by the kind of anchor they use, treaty versus birth or death anniversary versus historical event, makes both easier to hold.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is observed on 9 January to commemorate which one of the following events?
- (a)Mahatma Gandhi's return to India from South Africa in 1915
- (b)The founding of the Indian National Congress
- (c)The first sitting of the Constituent Assembly of India
- (d)The launch of the Champaran Satyagraha by Mahatma Gandhi
Answera — Gandhi landed back in India from South Africa on 9 January 1915, and the observance is pinned to that homecoming, which is why the Ministry of External Affairs calls him the greatest Pravasi.
(b) fails because the Indian National Congress was founded in December 1885, not in January. (c) fails because the Constituent Assembly first met on 9 December 1946 — the same day of the month but the wrong month, which is exactly the sort of near-miss that has to be checked rather than felt.
(d) fails because the Champaran Satyagraha came in 1917, two years after the return, and is anchored to Bihar rather than to the diaspora.
practice — not a real PYQ
The award conferred on members of the overseas Indian community at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention is the
- (a)Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award
- (b)Padma Shri
- (c)Jamnalal Bajaj Award
- (d)Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development
Answera — the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award is the recognition given at the convention to selected members of the diaspora for their contribution in various fields, in India and abroad.
(b) fails because the Padma Shri is one of the Padma civilian awards, announced around Republic Day and open to Indian citizens and, in specified cases, foreigners, but it is not the diaspora award tied to this convention.
(c) fails because the Jamnalal Bajaj Award is instituted by a private foundation for constructive work in the Gandhian tradition and has no connection to PBD.
(d) fails because the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development is a separate international prize awarded by its own trust, not a diaspora honour conferred at this convention.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following pairs of date and observance is correctly matched?
- (a)12 January — National Youth Day
- (b)9 January — National Voters' Day
- (c)23 January — Martyrs' Day
- (d)15 January — Republic Day
Answera — 12 January is Swami Vivekananda's birth anniversary and is observed as National Youth Day. (b) fails because National Voters' Day is 25 January, marking the foundation of the Election Commission of India in 1950; 9 January is Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
(c) fails because 23 January is Parakram Diwas, the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, while Martyrs' Day is observed on 30 January, the day Gandhi was assassinated in 1948.
(d) fails because Republic Day is 26 January; 15 January is Army Day, marking K. M. Cariappa taking over as the first Indian Commander-in-Chief in 1949. Only one pair survives, so the item has a single defensible answer.