Choose the most suitable option to replace the highlighted part of the sentence:
In an act of brazen defiance and indiscipline, the armed forces publicly challenging a notification issued by the prime minister’s office to deal with the leak of information, on a report in the respected Dawn newspaper.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The original sentence has a grammatical error because the highlighted part 'the armed forces publicly challenging a notification issued by the' is a participial phrase that lacks a main verb. The structure of the sentence requires a finite verb to make a complete, grammatically correct thought.
Option (C) corrects this by replacing the participial phrase with a clause that includes the simple past tense verb 'challenged' ('The armed forces publicly challenged a notification issued by the'). This makes the sentence grammatically complete and conveys the intended meaning that the armed forces performed the action of challenging the notification.