Polity · NCW / NCPCR / NCM & Other Statutory Bodies
The concept being tested: Ministry assignments and oversight of statutory boards.
With reference to India, consider the following pairs: I. The National Automotive Board — Ministry of Commerce and Industry. II. The Coir Board — Ministry of Heavy Industries. III. The National Centre for Trade Information — Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. How many of the above pairs are correctly matched?
The correct answer is None because all three pairs deliberately cross-wire each body with the ministry that actually governs a different body in the list. The National Automotive Board, set up to steer the Automotive Mission Plan, functions under the Ministry of Heavy Industries, not Commerce and Industry. The Coir Board, a statutory body created under the Coir Industry Act, 1953, is administered by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, not Heavy Industries. The National Centre for Trade Information, a joint venture of the India Trade Promotion Organisation and the National Informatics Centre, comes under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, not MSME. Every ministry named in the stem is the correct overseer of one of the other two bodies, never of the body it is paired with, so none of the three pairs is correctly matched.
What UPSC was testing
UPSC constructs this question by cyclically rotating the three correct ministries among the three bodies, so each false pairing still names a real ministry that genuinely oversees one of the other bodies on the list. This traps aspirants who recall that a body is government-linked but not its exact ministry into picking Only one or Only two rather than None.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 12 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2025.
The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.
Other past-year questions touching NCW / NCPCR / NCM & Other Statutory Bodies.