Ashtalakshmi Darshan Programme Takes 590 Students to Northeast

The correct answer is the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDoNER). Ashtalakshmi Darshan is that ministry's own youth-contact initiative: it brings students from states outside the region into the eight north-eastern states so that they meet the region's culture, institutions and development work directly. Union Minister for Communications and DoNER Jyotiraditya M. Scindia referred to the programme while meeting students at Mizoram University, and the ministry put the participation figure at more than 590 students in the past year. Option A, the Ministry of Culture, is wrong because the programme is not a culture-sector scheme even though cultural exchange is one of its aims. Option B, the Ministry of Education, is wrong because the students travel outside any academic curriculum or scholarship window. Option D, the Ministry of Tourism, is wrong because the tours are not a tourism-promotion product; the stated purpose is national integration and youth engagement under the Viksit Bharat 2047 goal.

The correct answer is more than 590. That is the participation figure the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region gave for the Ashtalakshmi Darshan Programme over the past year, and it is the number an examiner is most likely to lift from this news. The students travel from states across the country; the batch Union Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia met at Mizoram University had come from Goa and Chandigarh. Options A and B understate the count, and option D overstates it, so all three miss the figure the ministry actually reported. Candidates should pair the number with the three other memorisable details of the programme: the ministry behind it, the idea of the region's eight states as the nation's Ashtalakshmi, and the link the ministry draws to the goal of a developed India by 2047.

The correct answer is the eight states of the region. The North East is described as the country's Ashtalakshmi, the eightfold form of prosperity, with each of its eight states standing for one form of that wealth. It is the framing Prime Minister Narendra Modi uses for the region, and it is the idea on which the Ashtalakshmi Darshan Programme of the DoNER ministry rests: the tours are meant to show visiting students that the region is a source of national prosperity rather than a distant periphery. Option B is wrong because the expression counts states, not border districts. Option C is wrong because it has nothing to do with the region's river systems, however important they are to it. Option D is wrong because autonomous tribal councils are a feature of the constitutional arrangements for some of these states and are not what the eight in Ashtalakshmi counts.