Under which ministry or department does the Technology Development Board function?

The correct answer is Rs 130 crore. The Technology Development Board, which works under the Department of Science and Technology, agreed to give BigEndian Semiconductors of Bengaluru exactly this amount out of the Research Development and Innovation Fund, and the money is being routed through Optional Convertible Debt rather than as an outright grant. Option C is the trap most students fall into, because Rs 260 crore is the total cost of Project VeerAI, not the board's share; the board is paying half the bill, so the two figures must be kept apart in memory. Options A and D are round numbers that look plausible for a chip programme but match nothing in the agreement, neither the board's share nor the project's cost. A quick way to hold this is to pair the two numbers together: the whole project costs Rs 260 crore, and the Technology Development Board carries Rs 130 crore of it.

The correct answer is a camera-focused AI Vision System-on-Chip. Project VeerAI is building a single piece of silicon that lets a camera do its own thinking, combining artificial intelligence processing with security, privacy and connectivity features on a sovereign technology platform. Its first market is CCTV and surveillance in India and the Global South, with defence, automotive, industrial and medical uses planned afterwards. Option C is wrong, and is worth noting carefully, because the programme deliberately chose an application-specific chip over a general-purpose processor: a narrow design reaches buyers faster and fits one industry's needs more exactly. Option A is wrong because nothing in the project concerns memory or data centre storage. Option D is wrong because quantum computing is a separate field altogether and forms no part of this agreement. The phrase to remember is AI Vision SoC, built for cameras.

The correct answer is TRL-9. The agreement states that the project must lift the technology from Technology Readiness Level 5, where it stands now, to Technology Readiness Level 9, the stage at which a product has proved itself in actual use rather than in a laboratory. BigEndian Semiconductors will spend the board's money on further development, validation, integration, testing and scale-up precisely in order to make that climb. Options A, B and C each name an intermediate rung the technology will pass through on the way, but none of them is the destination written into the agreement, so each is incomplete rather than merely wrong. The logic behind the target is worth remembering: the Research Development and Innovation Fund is meant for technologies that need heavy investment to travel the last distance from advanced development to commercial deployment, which is exactly the stretch between TRL-5 and TRL-9.

The correct answer is the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, an institution aided by the Department of Atomic Energy. The new site proposed for its Dark Matter Laboratory lies at the 815-metre level of the Jaduguda underground mine, and the Chief Guest at UCIL's Diamond Jubilee Year celebrations was taken to see it along with the Technology Demonstration Pilot Plant. A deep underground location suits such a laboratory because the rock above screens out much of the background radiation that would otherwise swamp a sensitive detector, which is why a working uranium mine offers a ready site. Option C, the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, is the department's flagship research centre but is not named as the owner of this laboratory. Options B and D are respected research institutions in India, yet neither figures in the plan for the Jaduguda facility. The institute to remember with the 815-metre level is the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics.

The correct answer is Member-Finance, Atomic Energy Commission. Ms. Seema Jain attended the jubilee at Jaduguda in that capacity as Chief Guest, toured the Technology Demonstration Pilot Plant and the proposed site of the Dark Matter Laboratory, and described the year as a celebration of six decades of scientific capability, institutional experience and service to the nation, paying homage to Dr Homi Jehangir Bhabha and the pioneers of uranium mining in India. Option A belongs to Dr Kacham Anand Rao, who is Chairman and Managing Director of UCIL and spoke of the year as a proud marker for the UCIL family. Option B belongs to Dr Ajit Kumar Mohanty, Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, who conveyed his greetings. Option D is not a post named anywhere in connection with the celebrations, though the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics is the body planning the dark matter facility.