A federal advisory panel proposes expanding a national computerized file to permit law-enforcement agencies to track people under criminal investigation but have not yet been charged.

A. under criminal investigation but --> not parallel with "have not yet been charged "

B. under criminal investigation, but who --> same as A

C. under criminal investigation, but they --> same as A

D. who are under criminal investigation, but they --> not parallel

E. who are under criminal investigation but --> correct

A. under criminal investigation but - what follows but seems to be ambiguous as we don't know who has not been charged - federal government or people ??

B. under criminal investigation, ((but who)) - incorrect structure + ambiguity of "who".

C. under criminal investigation, but ((they)) - incorrect.

D. who are under criminal investigation, ((but they)) - incorrect.

E. who are under criminal investigation but - brings out the correct meaning by using who before the underlined part so as to convey that both the parts are about people. Thus, ambiguity is removed and correct meaning is conveyed.

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E is correct as it exactly replicates intended meaning.
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Why D is wrong. "They" can refer to people who are under criminal investigation

GMATNinja or anyone else feel free to correct my analysis:
(A) Parallelism Error:
Form: X BUT Y
Subject: People
X Element: "under criminal investigation" is a prepositional phrase
Y Element: "have not yet been charged" phrase that starts with a verb, but does not contain a subject

(B) Parallelism error (similar to A)
The addition of who corrects the missing Subject the Y element, but we need a form of be (is/was/are/am/be) with "under" as "under" starts a prepositional phrase
We can also eliminate (C) for the same reasons.

(D) who are under criminal investigation, but they
"who are under" - relative pronoun "who" is connected to form of be. Why is this correct? well it can connect with the non-underlined verb in the Y element of the parallelism marker
And, we can clearly see that the antecedent of "who" is "people".

But, "they" forms an independent clause. This is incorrect.
Rule: A relative clause (a clause beginning with a relative pronoun such as that, who, whom, which, whose) is never parallel to an independent clause
Eliminate D

(E) the relative clause "who" has a clear antecedent.
The relative pronoun "who" clearly introduces two parallel verbal phrases that are coordinated by the one-word marker, "but"
"they" is removed, eliminating the previous independent clause error in D

guptakashish02


Where is the verb in above sentence?
Would this be more apt:
Can u check if my reasoning for eliminating D is correct




I would stick to my earlier explanation of eliminating D based on parallelism issue rather than thinking about pronouns. I personally see no reason to substitute them with agencies. It just does not make sense.
Maybe veterans such as generis aragonn VeritasKarishma sudarshan22 can add more cents.

Happy study prep!
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The initial split here (under investigation vs. who are under investigation) is a non-issue. Either one is usable in the right circumstances. This is entirely about parallelism. Since all A-D all use "but" before "have not been charged," we need another verb for "people." That's where "who are" comes in to save the day. D doesn't fit with that fix because it puts a pronoun in front of the verb, spoiling parallelism. We can't say "I like desserts that include lots of chocolate but they are not too sweet."
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