With reference to Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar announced in June 2025, which of the following statements is/are correct ? 1. Yuva Puraskar was announced in 23 Indian languages. 2. There is no Yuva Puraskar in Dogri this year. Select the correct answer from the code given below : Code :
- (a)Only 2
- (b)Both 1 and 2
- (c)Neither 1 nor 2
- (d)Only 1
Correct — B, Both 1 and 2. The Sahitya Akademi's Executive Board, meeting on 18 June 2025 under the Akademi's President Madhav Kaushik, approved the Yuva Puraskar 2025 — and it went out in 23 languages, so statement 1 is right. The Akademi recognises 24 languages for its awards, and in the very same June-2025 announcement its Bal Sahitya Puraskar was given in all 24. That one-language gap between the two lists is the point of the question, and the language missing from the Yuva list was Dogri: there was no Yuva Puraskar in Dogri in 2025, so statement 2 is right as well. Both statements therefore stand, and the key marks (b). The Yuva Puraskar is the Akademi's award for writers aged 35 or below and carries a copper plaque and a cash prize of ₹50,000; the 2025 recipients included Advait Kottary in English and Parvati Tirkey in Hindi.
- (a)Only 2 — This rejects statement 1, but 23 is the correct figure for the Yuva Puraskar 2025. The number that would have made statement 1 false is 24 — that was the Bal Sahitya Puraskar count in the same announcement, and confusing the two lists is exactly the mistake this option rewards.
- (c)Neither 1 nor 2 — Both statements are in fact correct, so nothing supports this. The Yuva Puraskar 2025 was announced in 23 languages, and Dogri was the language in which no Yuva Puraskar was given that year.
- (d)Only 1 — This accepts the count but rejects the Dogri point, and the Dogri point is precisely what explains the count. The Akademi awards in 24 languages; the Yuva list stopped at 23 because Dogri was left out. Statement 2 is not an add-on — it is the reason statement 1 reads 23 rather than 24.
The Sahitya Akademi, set up in 1954, is India's national academy of letters. It confers awards in a fixed set of 24 languages — a list wider than the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule — and runs several distinct prizes: the main Sahitya Akademi Award, the Bal Sahitya Puraskar for children's literature, the Yuva Puraskar for writers aged 35 or below, and translation prizes. Its highest honour is not a prize at all but election to its Fellowship. Because the awards are announced language by language, a year's announcement can legitimately cover fewer than the full 24 if a jury does not settle on a recommendation in some language.
Two-statement current-affairs questions on awards usually hinge on a number, and the safest way to hold the number is to remember the pair that makes it meaningful rather than the number alone. Here the pair is 23 and 24: the Yuva Puraskar 2025 went out in 23 languages while the Bal Sahitya Puraskar in the same announcement went out in 24, and the single missing Yuva language was Dogri. Statement 2 is therefore the explanation of statement 1, which is a strong signal that both are meant to be true — the examiner has given you the count and then the reason for it. Do not attempt to reconstruct the Akademi's 24-language list from memory in the exam hall; hold instead the far more durable fact that the Akademi recognises 24 languages, that 2025's Yuva list came one short, and that the shortfall was Dogri.
- The Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2025 was approved by the Akademi's Executive Board on 18 June 2025, meeting under President Madhav Kaushik, and was announced in 23 languages
- There was no Yuva Puraskar in Dogri in 2025 — Dogri is the language that accounts for the gap between the Yuva list and the full set of languages the Akademi awards in
- The Bal Sahitya Puraskar 2025, announced at the same time, went out in 24 languages — one more than the Yuva list
- The Yuva Puraskar is for writers aged 35 or below and carries a copper plaque and ₹50,000; the 2025 winners included Advait Kottary (English) and Parvati Tirkey (Hindi)
- The Akademi recognises 24 languages for its awards, a set wider than the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule; check the composition against the Akademi's own list rather than reconstructing it from memory
- The Akademi's highest honour is not a cash award but election to its Fellowship
Both statements are true, so the answer is (b). The 23-versus-24 contrast is what makes the Dogri gap visible.
- Swapping the two 2025 counts — the Yuva Puraskar was 23 languages, the Bal Sahitya Puraskar 24
- Trying to recite the Akademi's 24-language list in the exam hall; it is not the 22 Eighth Schedule languages, and guessing at the extras loses more marks than it gains
- Assuming that a missing language means a language has been dropped from the Akademi's recognised set — a prize can simply go unawarded in a given year
UPPSC asks literary awards either as a straight who-won-what recall item, as it did with the Sahitya Akademi Award 2022 in 2023, or as a statement pair built around a count and the reason for it, as here. UPSC prefers the institutional question — which body confers the honour, and what its highest honour actually is.
Consider the following statements : 1. The National School of Drama was set up by Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1959. 2. The highest honour conferred by the Sahitya Akademi on a writer is by electing him its Fellow. Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(c) Both 1 and 2
The same institution asked in the same two-statement format — what the Sahitya Akademi confers and how its honours are ranked. Knowing that the Fellowship, not a puraskar, is the Akademi's highest honour is the natural companion to knowing how its puraskars are distributed across languages.
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
The same award-giving body two years earlier, asked from the recipient's side rather than the language-count side. UPPSC returns to the Sahitya Akademi's annual announcements often enough that the June cycle is worth following each year.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar is conferred on writers of which age group?
- (a)Below 21 years
- (b)35 years or below
- (c)45 years or below
- (d)There is no age limit
Answer(b) 35 years or below — the Yuva Puraskar is the Sahitya Akademi's award for young writers and carries a copper plaque and ₹50,000.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following is the highest honour conferred by the Sahitya Akademi on a writer?
- (a)The Sahitya Akademi Award
- (b)The Bhasha Samman
- (c)Election as a Fellow of the Akademi
- (d)The Yuva Puraskar
Answer(c) Election as a Fellow of the Akademi — the Fellowship, not any cash prize, is the Akademi's highest honour.