Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer using the code given below the lists. List – I (Padmavibhushan Fields 2025) A. Trade and Industry B. Literature and Education C. Medicine D. Art List – II (Awardee 2025) 1. Shri Lakshminarayana Subramaniam 2. Shri Osamu Suzuki 3. Shri M. T. Vasudevan Nair 4. Shri D. Nageshwar Reddy Code :
- (a)A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4
- (b)A-2, B-3, C-1, D-4
- (c)A-2, B-3, C-4, D-1
- (d)A-3, B-2, C-4, D-1
Correct — C, A-2, B-3, C-4, D-1. Take the four Padma Vibhushan citations of 2025 one at a time. A, Trade and Industry, goes to 2, Osamu Suzuki — the long-serving head of Suzuki Motor Corporation, whose decision to enter India created Maruti Udyog; his was a posthumous award, as he had died on 25 December 2024. B, Literature and Education, goes to 3, M. T. Vasudevan Nair — the Malayalam novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter, a Jnanpith laureate, whose award was also posthumous after his death on 25 December 2024. C, Medicine, goes to 4, Dr. D. Nageshwar Reddy — the Hyderabad gastroenterologist of the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, who had already held the Padma Shri (2002) and the Padma Bhushan (2016). D, Art, goes to 1, Dr. Lakshminarayana Subramaniam — the violinist who works across Carnatic and Western classical music. That mapping is A-2, B-3, C-4, D-1, which is option (c).
- (a)A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4 — Every pair here is inverted. It makes the writer M. T. Vasudevan Nair an awardee in Trade and Industry and the industrialist Osamu Suzuki an awardee in Literature and Education, and it likewise swaps the violinist L. Subramaniam into Medicine and the gastroenterologist D. Nageshwar Reddy into Art. Not one of the four is correctly placed.
- (b)A-2, B-3, C-1, D-4 — The first half is right — Osamu Suzuki in Trade and Industry, M. T. Vasudevan Nair in Literature and Education — but the second half is reversed. It puts L. Subramaniam, a musician, under Medicine and Dr. D. Nageshwar Reddy, a physician, under Art. This is the option that catches a candidate who identifies the two posthumous awardees confidently and then guesses the remaining pair.
- (d)A-3, B-2, C-4, D-1 — The mirror image of the previous trap. Medicine to Nageshwar Reddy and Art to L. Subramaniam are correct, but the top two are exchanged, so the Malayalam writer is credited with Trade and Industry and the Japanese industrialist with Literature and Education.
The Padma awards are India's civilian honours, announced every year on the eve of Republic Day and conferred by the President at investiture ceremonies at Rashtrapati Bhavan. They come in three grades — Padma Vibhushan for exceptional and distinguished service, Padma Bhushan for distinguished service of a high order, and Padma Shri for distinguished service — and every award carries a named field such as Art, Literature and Education, Medicine, Public Affairs, Science and Engineering, Trade and Industry, Social Work, Civil Service or Sports. The 2025 list was announced on 25 January 2025 and contained 7 Padma Vibhushan, 19 Padma Bhushan and 113 Padma Shri awards.
A match-list on an award year is really a memory test on the field label, not on the person: everyone recognises the four names, but the marks turn on whether Osamu Suzuki was honoured under Trade and Industry rather than under, say, Public Affairs. The efficient way to crack it is to fix the two most distinctive pairs first — a Japanese carmaker can only be Trade and Industry, and a physician can only be Medicine — which by itself eliminates options (a) and (d) and then (b). One clarification on the paper itself: some circulating typed reproductions of this question print the two list captions the other way round, with the awardees in List – I. The commission's own booklet, reproduced here, puts the fields in List – I; either way the four pairings and the correct code are unchanged.
- The Padma awards for 2025 were announced on 25 January 2025 and comprised 7 Padma Vibhushan, 19 Padma Bhushan and 113 Padma Shri
- Osamu Suzuki, the Japanese industrialist behind Suzuki Motor Corporation's entry into India, received the Padma Vibhushan 2025 posthumously in Trade and Industry; he died on 25 December 2024
- M. T. Vasudevan Nair, the Malayalam novelist and screenwriter and a Jnanpith laureate, received the Padma Vibhushan 2025 posthumously in Literature and Education; he died on 25 December 2024, the same day as Osamu Suzuki
- Dr. D. Nageshwar Reddy, gastroenterologist and head of the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, Hyderabad, was awarded the Padma Vibhushan 2025 in Medicine, having earlier received the Padma Shri in 2002 and the Padma Bhushan in 2016
- Dr. Lakshminarayana Subramaniam, the violinist known for combining the Carnatic and Western classical traditions, was awarded the Padma Vibhushan 2025 in Art
- The Padma awards were instituted in 1954; the Supreme Court held in Balaji Raghavan v. Union of India (1996) that they are not 'titles' within the meaning of Article 18 of the Constitution
Reading down the right-hand column gives A-2, B-3, C-4, D-1 — the official answer, option (c).
- Learning the list of awardees without the field label; the field is what the match-list actually tests
- Assuming a posthumous award is announced under a special category — Osamu Suzuki and M. T. Vasudevan Nair were both listed under ordinary fields, Trade and Industry and Literature and Education respectively
- Mixing the Padma Vibhushan list with the much longer Padma Shri list of the same year, or carrying over an awardee from the previous year's announcement
UPPSC asks the current year's honours as a match list of field to awardee or as a one-line 'who received X in year Y', keeping it purely factual; UPSC rarely asks the year's list and instead probes the framework — how many Bharat Ratna awards may be given in a year, whether the Padma awards are titles under Article 18, and who confers them.
Who was the first Indian actress to receive the Padma Shri Award?
- (a) Smita Patil
- (b) Nargis Dutt
- (c) Meena Kumari
- (d) Madhubala
Answer(b) Nargis Dutt
The same category of recall — a named Padma award tied to a named recipient. Nargis Dutt was the first Indian actress to receive the Padma Shri, in 1958, which is the Art-field equivalent of the D-1 pairing in this 2025 question.
Who among the following is not a recipient of the Bharat Ratna Award?
- (a) Ustad Bismillah Khan
- (b) Satyajit Ray
- (c) Lata Mangeshkar
- (d) Raj Kapoor
Answer(d) Raj Kapoor
The companion test on India's civilian honours: knowing precisely who holds which award. Bismillah Khan, Satyajit Ray and Lata Mangeshkar are Bharat Ratna recipients; Raj Kapoor received the Padma Bhushan and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award but never the Bharat Ratna.
Para athlete Deepa Malik, who has been awarded Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award 2019, belongs to the sport
- (a) Badminton
- (b) Discus throw
- (c) Shot put
- (d) Weight lifting
Answer(c) Shot put
The identical construction on the year's national honours — take the award, then identify the field or discipline the awardee belongs to. There it was the Khel Ratna and the discipline shot put; here it is the Padma Vibhushan and the field Medicine, Art, Literature or Trade and Industry.
Who is the Author of the famous Novel “All the Lives We Never Lived”, which received the Sahitya Akademi Award, 2022?
- (a) Shobha De
- (b) Anuradha Roy
- (c) Anita Desai
- (d) Sudha Murthy
Answer(b) Anuradha Roy
Another award-to-recipient item from the annual honours cycle that UPPSC mines every year, this time the Sahitya Akademi Award — the same literary space in which M. T. Vasudevan Nair's Padma Vibhushan citation sits.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Padma Awards are announced every year on the eve of which of the following occasions?
- (a)Independence Day
- (b)Republic Day
- (c)Gandhi Jayanti
- (d)Constitution Day
Answer(b) Republic Day — the list is announced on 25 January, and the 2025 awards were announced on 25 January 2025.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following recipients of the Padma Vibhushan 2025 was honoured in the field of Medicine?
- (a)Shri Osamu Suzuki
- (b)Dr. L. Subramaniam
- (c)Dr. D. Nageshwar Reddy
- (d)Shri M. T. Vasudevan Nair
Answer(c) Dr. D. Nageshwar Reddy — the Hyderabad gastroenterologist; Suzuki was honoured in Trade and Industry, Subramaniam in Art and Vasudevan Nair in Literature and Education.