Indian States & UTs Mixed Quiz: Set 18

The correct answer is C, Visakhapatnam. The Eastern Naval Command has its headquarters at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, the only natural harbour on India's eastern seaboard, and the city also has the Hindustan Shipyard, a submarine base and the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. Option A is wrong because Kochi is the headquarters of the Southern Naval Command, which is the navy's training command. Option B is wrong because Mumbai is the headquarters of the Western Naval Command. Option D is wrong because Chennai, although a large port on the same coast, does not host a naval command headquarters; it has a naval base under the Eastern Command. Learn the three together: Western at Mumbai, Eastern at Visakhapatnam, Southern at Kochi. The city is also called the City of Destiny, and the Hindustan Shipyard there builds and repairs ships for the navy and the merchant fleet.

The correct answer is D, Blackbuck. The blackbuck, called Krishna Jinka in Telugu, is the state animal of Andhra Pradesh. It is an antelope of open grassland and scrub; the male turns dark brown to black with age and carries long spiral horns, while the female stays fawn coloured and usually hornless. It is among the fastest Indian animals and is protected under Schedule I of the Wild Life Protection Act of 1972. Punjab and Haryana also carry the blackbuck as their state animal. A is wrong because the mithun, a domesticated bovine of the hills, is the state animal of Arunachal Pradesh and of Nagaland. B is wrong because the ox is a domestic draught animal and is not named as any state animal. C is wrong because the one-horned rhinoceros is the state animal of Assam, where Kaziranga protects most of its population. Exam tip: blackbuck for Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana; rhinoceros for Assam; mithun for Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.

The correct answer is B, Bathukamma. Bathukamma is celebrated for nine days during Navaratri, when women arrange seasonal flowers, chiefly the yellow tangedu, in the shape of a cone on a brass plate, sing and move around it in the evening, and finally float it in a tank or a stream. The festival closes with Saddula Bathukamma, and the Telangana government has recognised it as the state festival. The tangedu flower used in it is also the state flower.

Option A, Pongal, is the harvest festival of Tamil Nadu in the month of January. Option C, Ugadi, is the new year of the Telugu and Kannada regions and is widely celebrated in Telangana, but it is not the designated state festival. Option D, Bihu, belongs to Assam. A question of this kind is simply asking whether the candidate can attach the festival to the right state.

The correct answer is C, Andhra Pradesh. Telangana was separated from Andhra Pradesh and came into existence on 2 June 2014 as the twenty-ninth state of India. The region had been merged with Andhra State in 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act to form Andhra Pradesh, and the long demand for a separate state, carried by the 1969 agitation and later by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi formed in 2001, ended with the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.

Option A, Maharashtra, is the state to the north of Telangana and the Godavari enters Telangana from it, but no part of Telangana was taken from Maharashtra. Option B, Karnataka, borders Telangana on the west and shares the Deccan plateau, which makes it a plausible wrong choice. Option D, Madhya Pradesh, does not touch Telangana at all; the state formed by division of Madhya Pradesh in 2000 was Chhattisgarh.

The correct answer is C, 1973. The state was created on 1 November 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act with the name Mysore State, and it was renamed Karnataka on 1 November 1973, a day now observed every year as Karnataka Rajyotsava. Option A is wrong because 1956 is the year of formation, not of the renaming, and the question asks only for the change of name; mixing the two is the standard trap in this topic. Option B is wrong because nothing happened to the name of the state in 1960; that year saw the division of Bombay State into Maharashtra and Gujarat. Option D is wrong because by 1980 the state had carried its present name for seven years, and no renaming took place in that year.

The correct answer is B, Potti Sriramulu. He fasted for a separate Telugu-speaking province and died on 15 December 1952 on the fifty-eighth day of the fast; the protests that followed made the government concede the demand within days, and Andhra State was created the next October. He is remembered as Amarajeevi, the immortal one. Option A is wrong because Tanguturi Prakasam, called Andhra Kesari, became the first Chief Minister of the new state but did not die in the agitation. Option C is wrong because Kandukuri Veeresalingam was a nineteenth-century social reformer of the Telugu country who worked for widow remarriage and women's education. Option D is wrong because Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and later President of India.

The correct answer is B, 1969. Madras State was created on 1 November 1956 under the States Reorganisation Act, and the change of name to Tamil Nadu took effect on 14 January 1969 under the Madras State Alteration of Name Act. Option A is wrong because 1956 is the year the state was formed under its old name, and confusing formation with renaming is the standard trap in this topic. Option C is wrong because 1973 is the year Mysore State was renamed Karnataka, a neighbouring state, which is why that year is offered here as a distractor. Option D is wrong because 1996 is the year the capital city Madras was renamed Chennai, a change of the city's name and not of the state's. Pairing 1956, 1969 and 1996 correctly settles most questions from this part of the syllabus.

The correct answer is B, Kerala. Kolathunadu, Valluvanad and Thekkumkoor were small medieval kingdoms, or swaroopams, of Kerala. Kolathunadu, ruled by the Kolathiri rajas, lay in north Malabar around present-day Kannur; Valluvanad spread over the Palakkad and Malappuram area and is remembered for the Mamankam festival at Tirunavaya; Thekkumkoor lay in the Kottayam region and was absorbed by Travancore under Marthanda Varma in the eighteenth century. Before unification, Kerala was split among such chiefdoms along with Travancore, Cochin and Calicut, and the present state was formed on 1 November 1956 from Travancore-Cochin and the Malabar district of Madras. Option A is wrong because Karnataka's old kingdoms were the Kadambas, Hoysalas and Vijayanagara. Option C is wrong because ancient Bihar was home to Magadha, Anga and Videha. Option D is wrong because Gujarat was ruled by the Solankis of Anhilwada and the Chaulukyas. Exam tip: names ending in nadu or koor in this list point to the medieval chiefdoms of Kerala.

The correct answer is A, the Kadapa region. Mangampet, in the Kadapa basin of Rayalaseema, holds one of the world's largest single deposits of barytes, the ore of barium, which is used as a weighting agent in oil well drilling mud, in paint and in glass. The Kadapa basin is also known for its limestone, dolomite and uranium exploration. Option B is wrong because the Srikakulam region in the far north is associated with the coast, the Vamsadhara and the Buddhist site of Salihundam. Option C is wrong because the East Godavari country is delta land known for rice, coconut and offshore natural gas rather than for barytes. Option D is wrong because the Prakasam region is known for Chirala handlooms and for tobacco. Remember the pairing of Mangampet with barytes and Nellore with mica.

The correct answer is B, Gitanjali. The collection of devotional poems, which Tagore himself rendered into English, won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, making him the first Indian and the first non European to receive the award. He also wrote the national anthems of India and of Bangladesh. Option A is wrong because Anandamath is the novel of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, the work in which the song Vande Mataram appears. Option C is wrong because Gora is indeed a novel by Tagore but is not the work for which the prize was given. Option D is wrong for the same reason: Chokher Bali is another of his novels, not the Nobel work. Remember three names together: Gitanjali for Tagore, Anandamath for Bankim Chandra and Jana Gana Mana for the anthem.

The correct answer is B, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah. He was the fifth ruler of the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda, and he founded the city of Hyderabad and raised the Charminar there in 1591. The building takes its name from its four minarets, carries a mosque on its upper floor and stands at the crossing of two roads in the old city, the plan on which the new capital was laid out.

Option A, Ibrahim Qutb Shah, was his father and is remembered for the Hussain Sagar lake, built during his reign. Option C, Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah, founded the Asaf Jahi line in 1724, more than a century after the Charminar was built. Option D, Aurangzeb, captured Golconda in 1687 and so arrived even later; he built nothing of this kind at Hyderabad. The pair to memorise is Charminar with 1591 and Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah.

The correct answer is B, Dantewada. The Bailadila range in Dantewada district holds some of the finest haematite iron ore in the world, mined by the National Mineral Development Corporation, and the name is said to come from the hump of an ox, which the range resembles. Option A is wrong because Korba is the coal and power district, with large thermal stations and the BALCO aluminium smelter, which makes it the power capital of the state. Option C is wrong because Durg is where the Bhilai Steel Plant stands; it consumes iron ore rather than producing it. Option D is wrong because Raigarh is associated with coal mining and with the Raigarh gharana of Kathak, not with Bailadila. The clean pairing to memorise is Bailadila for iron ore, Korba for coal and power, Bhilai for steel.

The correct answer is B, Sharavathi. The Sharavathi is a west-flowing river of Karnataka, and at Jog in Shivamogga district it drops in four separate cascades named Raja, Rani, Rocket and Roarer, making one of the highest waterfalls in India. The Linganamakki dam is built on the same river upstream. Option A is wrong because the Kaveri makes the Shivanasamudra falls, where the two streams are called Gaganachukki and Bharachukki. Option C is wrong because the Tungabhadra is a tributary of the Krishna and is remembered for the dam at Hosapete and for flowing past Hampi, not for a great waterfall. Option D is wrong because the Krishna enters Karnataka from Maharashtra and flows east across the plateau, carrying the Almatti dam but no famous falls in the state.

The correct answer is D, Tripura. The Manikya dynasty ruled Tripura for centuries, and its kings all took the title Manikya. Their history is recorded in the Rajmala, a chronicle in Bengali verse first compiled in the fifteenth century under Dharma Manikya. The Ujjayanta Palace at Agartala, built by Radha Kishore Manikya at the beginning of the twentieth century, was their seat and now houses a state museum, and the lake palace Neermahal was raised by Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya, the last ruling king, after whom Agartala's airport is named. The princely state signed the merger agreement and joined the Indian Union in October 1949. Option A is wrong because Gujarat was ruled by the Solanki or Chaulukya line. Option B is wrong because Rajasthan had the Sisodia, Kachwaha and Rathore houses. Option C is wrong because Manipur was ruled by the Ningthouja or Meitei dynasty. Exam tip: Manikya means Tripura, its chronicle is the Rajmala, and it merged with India in 1949.

The correct answer is B, the Nilgiris. Doddabetta, about 2,637 metres high and close to Udhagamandalam or Ooty, is the highest point in Tamil Nadu and the highest in the Nilgiri range, where the Western and Eastern Ghats meet. Option A is wrong because the Anamalai hills lie further south in the Western Ghats, carry Valparai and the Indira Gandhi national park, and their highest summits fall in Kerala. Option C is wrong because the Javadi hills belong to the Eastern Ghats in the north of the state and are far lower. Option D is wrong because the Shevaroy hills, which carry the hill station of Yercaud, are also part of the Eastern Ghats and rise to only about sixteen hundred metres. Doddabetta also has an observatory that makes it a favourite with paper setters.

The correct answer is C, Lakshadweep. With an area of only about 32 square kilometres, Lakshadweep is the smallest Union Territory of India. It is a group of 36 coral islands in the Arabian Sea, of which only ten are inhabited, and its capital is Kavaratti. Being coral atolls, the islands are tiny and low lying, which is why the total land area stays so small even though the lagoons and waters around them stretch very wide. Option A is wrong because Daman and Diu covers about 112 square kilometres, more than three times Lakshadweep, and since 2020 it is part of the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. Option B is wrong because Ladakh is the largest Union Territory by area. Option D is wrong because Jammu and Kashmir is also far larger and is the Union Territory with the biggest population. Exam tip: Lakshadweep is the smallest by area, Ladakh the largest.

The correct answer is B, Amaravati. When Telangana was separated in 2014 the two states shared the old High Court at Hyderabad for a few years; a separate Andhra Pradesh High Court was then constituted and began functioning at Amaravati, the new capital on the bank of the Krishna, on 1 January 2019, while the court at Hyderabad continued as the High Court for the State of Telangana. Option A is wrong because Hyderabad is now the seat of the Telangana High Court alone. Option C is wrong because Visakhapatnam is the largest city of the state and had been proposed as an administrative centre, but it is not the seat of the High Court. Option D is wrong because Kurnool was the capital of Andhra State in 1953 and has been proposed as a judicial centre, which is exactly why it appears as a distractor.

The correct answer is A, Mulugu. The Sammakka Saralamma Jatara, also called the Medaram Jatara, is held once in two years at Medaram in Mulugu district, in the forest tract of the former Warangal region. It honours Sammakka and her daughter Saralamma, Koya tribal women remembered for resisting the rulers of their time, and it draws enormous crowds of pilgrims who offer jaggery equal to their own weight.

Option B, Nizamabad, lies in the north-west of the state and is known for turmeric and for the Sriram Sagar project, not for this fair. Option C, Adilabad, is the home of the Gond people and of the Nagoba Jatara, another tribal fair, which is the closest trap in the set. Option D, Nalgonda, lies in the Krishna basin in the south of the state. Medaram, Mulugu and the two year cycle are the three points to remember.

The correct answer is A, Mullayanagiri. Mullayanagiri, in Chikkamagaluru district in the Baba Budangiri range of the Western Ghats, rises to about one thousand nine hundred and thirty metres and is the highest point in Karnataka. Option B is wrong because Anamudi, at about two thousand six hundred and ninety-five metres, is in Kerala and is the highest peak in India south of the Himalaya, which is why it is offered here as a distractor. Option C is wrong because Kudremukh, also in Karnataka and also in the Western Ghats, is a lower peak better known for its iron ore and for the national park around it. Option D is wrong because Doddabetta is the highest peak of the Nilgiris and lies in Tamil Nadu, near Udhagamandalam.

The correct answer is B, Rajaraja Chola I. The Brihadeeswarar or Peruvudaiyar temple at Thanjavur, also called the Big Temple, was completed about 1010 CE by Rajaraja Chola I, and its tall vimana of granite is the high point of Dravidian temple architecture; it is the core of the Great Living Chola Temples inscribed as a World Heritage Site. Option A is wrong because Rajendra Chola I, his son, built the temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, the usual confusion in this question. Option C is wrong because Narasimhavarman I was a Pallava king of the seventh century associated with Mahabalipuram, three centuries earlier and a different dynasty. Option D is wrong because Karikala Chola belongs to the early Sangam age Cholas and is remembered for the Kallanai across the Kaveri. The granite vimana of the Thanjavur temple rises to about sixty six metres and was the tallest tower in India when it was raised.