An institute has 5 departments and each department has 50 students. If students are picked up randomly from all 5 departments to form a committee, what should be the minimum number of students in the committee so that at least one department should have representation of minimum 5 students?

We have to employ the pigeon hole principle to solve this problem.
The maximum number of students who can be picked from each department such that 5 students are not selected from the same department is 4. 
Therefore, after 4 students from each department are selected (i.e., 4*5 = 20 students in total), the 21st student selected will be the fifth student to be selected from one of the 5 departments. Therefore, 20+1 = 21 students should be selected in total to ensure that at least five students from one of the departments is selected. Therefore, option C is the right answer.