Who inaugurated India’s first lithium-ion battery plant in Tirupati, Andhra…

Concept: a “who inaugurated X” current-affairs fact is settled by the documented record of the event, for which the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau releases are the primary source. The useful structural clue is sectoral sponsorship: when a new manufacturing facility is a milestone of one central ministry’s promotion programme, the opening is usually performed by that ministry’s minister rather than by the most senior leader in government, because the ceremony belongs to that ministry’s programme. Electronics hardware and cell manufacturing sit with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), which runs the Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) promotion schemes.

Application: the facility is a privately built plant — the lithium-ion cell manufacturing unit of Munoth Industries Limited at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India’s first lithium-ion cell manufacturing plant — set up within the electronics-manufacturing ecosystem that MeitY promotes. Press Information Bureau releases record that its pre-production run was inaugurated on 16 September 2022 by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, then Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology.

Contrast: the same sectoral test applied to the other office-holders named in the options, as of September 2022:

• Narendra Modi, Prime Minister — heads the Council of Ministers and the Prime Minister’s Office, whose directly held subjects were Atomic Energy, Space, and Personnel and Public Grievances; electronics manufacturing was not a PMO subject.

• Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance — remit is the Union Budget, taxation, banking and insurance, and public financial management.

• Amit Shah, Union Home Minister — remit is internal security, the central armed police forces, border management, and Centre–State relations.

Cross-check: the documentary record and the policy context agree: the plant belongs to the MeitY-run push for self-reliance in electronics and cell manufacturing (Atmanirbhar Bharat, the Production Linked Incentive schemes, and Electronics Manufacturing Clusters), and the Press Information Bureau releases of September 2022 place the Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology at the Tirupati event.

Result: Rajeev Chandrasekhar, then Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, inaugurated the plant.