INS Trishul Joins 24th India-France Exercise Varuna at Toulon

The correct answer is France. Varuna is the annual bilateral maritime exercise between the Indian Navy and the French Navy, and in its twenty-fourth edition the Indian warship Trishul sailed to the French port of Toulon to take part. Option A is wrong because the naval exercise India holds with the United Kingdom goes by a different name. Option C is wrong as well; the drill India conducts with Russia is a separate series and has nothing to do with Varuna. Option D is incorrect because the exercise with Japan is also a distinct series with its own name. A useful way to fix this in memory is to link the French connection with the ports and units named in this edition, Toulon as the port of call and the French ships Charles de Gaulle, Forbin and La Fayette, along with the nuclear-powered submarine Suffren that took part in the sea phase.

The correct answer is the 24th edition. The Ministry of Defence stated that INS Trishul arrived at Toulon to join the twenty-fourth edition of the exercise, which makes Varuna one of the longest-running bilateral naval exercises India takes part in. Options A and B, the 20th and 22nd editions, belong to earlier years of the same series and are the kind of near-miss figures a paper setter places to test whether the current edition has been noted carefully. Option D, the 26th, runs ahead of the present count and is therefore wrong. For the examination hall, the safest habit is to remember the edition number together with the year, so that the 24th edition is tied to 2026 and to the port of Toulon in France. Remember also that the ship arrived there on 22 September 2026 and was greeted with a ceremonial water cannon salute.

The correct answer is 205. The Commanding Officer, officers and crew of the ship laid a wreath at the Mazargues War Memorial in Marseille in remembrance of 205 Indian soldiers who made the supreme sacrifice during the World Wars. Options A, C and D offer figures close enough to be plausible, and each is wrong; such near figures are a common trap in examinations where only one number has been reported. Two details help the answer stick. First, the memorial stands at Marseille, while the ship was berthed at Toulon, so the city of the memorial and the port of call are different places on the French Mediterranean coast. Second, the wreath-laying was part of the harbour phase of the exercise, which also included cross-deck visits, an exchange of operational experience, a cultural evening on board and a friendly volleyball match between the two crews.