What is the sanctioned training target for the fourteen States and UTs reviewed in the first phase?

The answer is 34,920. Four figures travel together in this item and the question turns on keeping them apart. 34,920 is the number of rural young people starting training in October 2026; 1,164 is the number of batches they are divided into; 3,57,112 is the far larger sanctioned target for the same fourteen States and Union Territories, to be met by 31 December 2027; and 5.6 lakh is the total already allocated across more than 1,200 projects by 24 States and Union Territories.

So option C is the batch count, option B is the sanctioned target and option D is the wider allocation, each a real figure from the announcement but an answer to a different question. A useful ordering is smallest to largest: batches, then the October intake, then the sanctioned target, then the national allocation.

The answer is the Ministry of Rural Development, which is reviewing State readiness and rolling out the second phase of the scheme. The placement of DDU-GKY under Rural Development rather than under Skill Development is the point worth fixing in memory, because the name contains the word Kaushalya and the obvious guess is therefore wrong.

The clue is in the rest of the name: Grameen. The scheme is aimed at poor rural youth specifically, which is what puts it in the rural development portfolio. It is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, its training is tied to placement rather than ending at a certificate, and courses run from three months up to twelve. The other ministries listed all work on employment or training in some form, which is exactly what makes them effective distractors.

The correct answer is All senior citizens aged 70 and above. On 11 September 2024 the Government extended AB PM-JAY to everyone aged 70 and above, regardless of income, covering about 6 crore senior citizens. They receive the Ayushman Vay Vandana card, and more than 1.36 crore such cards had been issued by 21 September 2026.

ASHA workers are the distractor: about 37 lakh families of ASHAs, anganwadi workers and helpers were indeed added, but earlier, in March 2024, and through a separate decision. Construction workers join through the Building and Other Construction Workers boards, and students are not a category at all. The name is easy to place: "Vay" refers to age, so the Vay Vandana card is the one for the elderly.

The correct answer is Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) 2011. Rural families qualify under six deprivation criteria of the SECC 2011, such as households with only one kucha room, no adult member between 16 and 59, female-headed households without an adult male, households with a disabled member, SC/ST households and landless households dependent on casual manual labour. Urban families qualify under 11 occupational categories, from rag pickers and domestic workers to construction workers and drivers.

Census 2011 is the tempting wrong answer: the SECC was a separate exercise from the population census. The National Family Health Survey is a health survey, not an eligibility list, and Aadhaar is an identity number, not a poverty database. Families once covered under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana are included too.

The correct answer is ₹5 lakh. AB PM-JAY provides cashless hospitalisation cover of up to ₹5 lakh per family per year, covering 1,961 procedures across 27 medical specialties at public and private empanelled hospitals. The cover is per family, not per person, and there is no cap on family size or age.

The other amounts are distractors. The scale of use is worth remembering: by its eighth anniversary the scheme had funded about 13.25 crore hospital admissions worth ₹2.03 lakh crore, and over 48.51 crore people, about 33% of the population, held Ayushman cards. The Union Budget for 2026-27 provides ₹9,500 crore for it. A typical example in the backgrounder is a 65-year-old woman from Haryana whose hip surgery costing ₹44,140 was done free under the scheme.