Office of PSA Holds First State Nodal Officers Meeting on I-STEM

The correct answer is January 2020. I-STEM, the Indian Science Technology and Engineering facilities Map, was conceived and supported by the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser and launched by the Prime Minister in January 2020. Since then it has grown into a national resource with more than 31,000 scientific instruments across nearly 4,000 institutions and over 65,000 registered users.

The other dates are distractors. The portal came back into the news on 21 September 2026, when the Office of the PSA held the first State Governments Nodal Officers Meeting, chaired by Scientific Secretary Dr Parvinder Maini, with officers from 23 States and 4 UTs. The aim is to bring State universities and laboratories onto I-STEM so that expensive publicly funded instruments are shared rather than bought again by every institution.

The correct answer is Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser. The PSA's Office conceived and supports I-STEM, and it was this office that convened the first State Governments Nodal Officers Meeting for the portal on 21 September 2026. The meeting was chaired by Dr (Mrs) Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary in the Office of the PSA.

The other options are plausible because they are all part of India's science administration. NITI Aayog is the government's policy think tank. The Department of Science & Technology funds research and runs many science programmes. CSIR is a network of national laboratories, and its own ANALYTICS portal for instruments is now being integrated with I-STEM through API links, which makes it a particularly tempting wrong answer. But the portal itself belongs to the Office of the PSA.

The correct answer is 31,000. The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser says I-STEM now lists more than 31,000 scientific instruments across nearly 4,000 institutions, and has over 65,000 registered users. Listing of publicly funded equipment that costs more than ₹20 lakh on the portal further strengthens shared access to research infrastructure.

The other numbers are distractors. For exams, keep the three scale figures together: 31,000-plus instruments, about 4,000 institutions and 65,000-plus users. Also keep the meeting figures separate from the portal figures: the first State Governments Nodal Officers Meeting on 21 September 2026 had officers from 23 States and 4 UTs. The purpose of the portal is to improve utilisation of existing equipment and reduce duplication of investment across the research system.