UPSC Prelims Practice Questions — The Artificial Intelligence is no longer an option but an essential component of working in every sphere of life: says Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh

Q1. Which one of the following institutions leads (heads) the BharatGen consortium?

  • A. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay
  • B. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras
  • C. International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad
  • D. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur

Q2. BharatGen is described as India's first 'sovereign' multilingual and multimodal AI stack. In this context, the term 'sovereign' most precisely refers to which one of the following?

  • A. A foundational AI model that is government-funded and developed indigenously within India rather than being dependent on foreign proprietary models
  • B. An AI model whose entire source code and model weights are, by mandate, fully open-sourced for unrestricted public use
  • C. An AI model deployed exclusively for the armed forces and national security agencies
  • D. An AI model that functions entirely offline, without any internet connectivity, to guarantee data sovereignty

Q3. The BharatGen initiative, which develops the PARAM/Param series of foundation models, is hosted and coordinated exclusively by which one of the following implementing agencies?

  • A. The Technology Innovation Hub (Foundation for IoT and IoE) at IIT Bombay
  • B. The IndiaAI Innovation Centre under MeitY
  • C. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune
  • D. The National Informatics Centre (NIC)

Q4. PARAM-1 and Param-2 are described as 'foundation models'. In this context, a foundation model is best defined as which one of the following?

  • A. A large-scale model trained on broad data that can be adapted to a wide range of downstream tasks
  • B. A model that is always trained solely on a single Indian language for one narrow, fixed task
  • C. A rule-based expert system that never requires any training data and only executes hand-coded rules
  • D. A model used exclusively to lay the physical computing infrastructure (data centres) that other AI applications run on

Q5. Under the IndiaAI Mission, the 'Datasets Platform' (IndiaAI Datasets Platform) pillar is best described as which one of the following?

  • A. A pillar that provides streamlined access to quality non-personal datasets for AI innovation
  • B. A pillar that builds physical GPU clusters to deliver high-performance common compute capacity
  • C. A pillar that finances deep-tech AI startups at various stages of growth
  • D. A pillar that develops indigenous safety, bias-audit and watermarking tools for AI

Q6. Under the NM-ICPS, a 'Technology Innovation Hub' (TIH) is best defined as which one of the following?

  • A. A Section-8 (not-for-profit) company set up within a host institute and assigned a specific technology vertical
  • B. A for-profit public-sector undertaking wholly owned by the Department of Science & Technology
  • C. An autonomous statutory body created by a dedicated Act of Parliament for cyber-physical systems
  • D. A temporary project cell within a ministry that has no independent legal identity

Q7. The National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) is implemented by which one of the following?

  • A. Department of Science & Technology (DST)
  • B. Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY)
  • C. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR)
  • D. Ministry of Education

Q8. The India-AI Impact Summit 2026 is distinguished by which one of the following superlatives?

  • A. It is the first global AI summit to be hosted in the Global South
  • B. It is the first-ever AI summit to be hosted by India
  • C. It is the first AI summit convened under the formal aegis of the United Nations
  • D. It is the first summit of any kind to be held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi