PRIP, the scheme under which the New Discovery track has been announced, stands for which of the following?

The correct answer is Rs 50 crore. The Department of Pharmaceuticals announced that the New Discovery track will provide financial assistance of up to this amount per company, per project or per portfolio of projects, subject to minimum co-funding of a quarter of the project cost from bona fide institutional investors. Option A is the ceiling of the Early Stage track, which supports start-ups and MSMEs at the lowest readiness levels, so it is a genuine figure but from a different track. Option D is the ceiling of the Later Stage track, which applies to projects at higher readiness levels and is capped at a share of the approved cost. Option B is not a ceiling under any of the three tracks. Learn the three ceilings as a set, since the paper setter swaps them between tracks.

The correct answer is Rs 5,000 crore. This is the outlay with which the scheme aims to strengthen India's pharmaceutical and medical technology research and development ecosystem. Option A is the amount already committed under the first call, when 41 projects were approved for roughly that sum, so it is a real figure from the announcement but not the outlay, and it is the distractor most likely to be picked. Options B and D are round figures that do not appear in the announcement at all. A useful way to hold this together is to remember that a little under a third of the outlay has been committed in the first round, with evaluation of the remaining first-round applications still going on and results expected over the following month.

The correct answer is TRL 1, 2 or 3. Start-ups and MSMEs taking up New Chemical Entity or New Biological Entity projects at those three readiness levels may apply under this exclusive track, and the department will support them to progress to higher levels but not beyond TRL 6. Option B describes the eligibility band of the Later Stage track, which is open to industry as well as start-ups and MSMEs, so it is the closest and most tempting wrong choice. Option C names levels that fall outside what any of the tracks admit for entry. Option D is wrong because the scheme sets definite bands for each track rather than admitting every level. Note that the Early Stage track shares the same entry band but caps support at TRL 5.

The correct answer is paddy. The sanction covers pulses and oilseeds only, and paddy is a cereal bought through a separate central pool arrangement rather than through the Price Support Scheme. Option A, tur or arhar, is very much covered: the single biggest item in the approval is tur in Uttar Pradesh. Option D, soybean, is covered twice over, in Karnataka and again in Telangana, and is the main oilseed in the sanction. Option B, sunflower, is covered in Karnataka alone, the smallest of the three Karnataka items. Moong is the fourth crop named and appears in all three states. So the odd one out is paddy, which is not part of this pulses-and-oilseeds approval at all, and a candidate who remembers that the scheme handles pulses, oilseeds and copra can rule it out at once.

The correct answer is Uttar Pradesh. It was allotted Rs 3,992.57 crore of the sanction, the largest of the three state shares, almost all of it for tur: 4,66,000 metric tonnes worth Rs 3,937.70 crore, along with 6,250 metric tonnes of moong worth Rs 54.87 crore. Option A, Karnataka, stands second with Rs 1,107 crore, spread across soybean, moong and sunflower, so it is covered by the approval but is not the largest. Option B, Telangana, is third with Rs 448.42 crore for soybean and moong. Option D, Madhya Pradesh, is a large producer of pulses and oilseeds and therefore a plausible guess, but it is not among the three states named in this particular sanction. Only Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana are covered.