The UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018 lay down how institutions must detect and act against plagiarism. Two committees are central: the Departmental Academic Integrity Panel (DAIP) at department level and the Institutional Academic Integrity Panel (IAIP) at institution level.

The statement that an institution can initiate action on the basis of an examiner's findings is correct. The regulations allow a Higher Education Institution to begin proceedings once a plagiarism concern is flagged, including through an examiner's report on a thesis or dissertation.

The statement that the Departmental Academic Integrity Panel is chaired by the Head of the Department is also correct — the regulations expressly place the Head of the Department as the chairperson of the DAIP, supported by a senior academic and an external member.

The remaining statement — that institutions cannot take suo motu cognizance of plagiarism — is false. The regulations in fact empower institutions to act on their own motion whenever plagiarism comes to notice; they are not required to wait for an external complaint. Because this claim is wrong, every option containing it is eliminated: the pairing of the examiner-findings statement with this false suo-motu claim fails, the pairing of the false claim with the Head-of-Department statement fails, and the all-three option fails.

Only the two genuinely correct statements — action on examiner's findings, and DAIP chaired by the Head of the Department — stand together, so the answer is A and C only.