Indian States & UTs Mixed Quiz: Set 20

The correct answer is A, Kodagu. The Kaveri rises at Talakaveri on the Brahmagiri hills in Kodagu district, the old Coorg, and flows east and then south-east across Karnataka into Tamil Nadu before reaching the Bay of Bengal. Kodagu is also the chief coffee growing district of the state. Option B is wrong because Chikkamagaluru holds Mullayanagiri, the highest peak in the state, and is the other great coffee district, but no major river rises there. Option C is wrong because Hassan district holds Halebidu, Belur and Shravanabelagola and is a centre of Hoysala and Jain monuments rather than a river source. Option D is wrong because Shivamogga district holds the Jog Falls on the Sharavathi, a different river that flows west. All four districts named here lie in the Western Ghats belt, so the safe marker is Talakaveri on the Brahmagiri hills, which belongs to Kodagu alone.

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 A, 1806. On 10 July 1806 the Indian sepoys of the garrison at Vellore in present day Tamil Nadu rose against their British officers over new regulations on dress, beards and caste marks, and the rising, though crushed within a day, is remembered as the first major mutiny of Indian soldiers, half a century before 1857. Option B is wrong because 1824 is the year of the Barrackpore mutiny in Bengal, a later and smaller rising of the same kind. Option C is wrong because 1857 is the year of the great revolt, which the Vellore Mutiny preceded by fifty one years, and this is the standard trap. Option D is wrong because 1799 is the year of the fall of Seringapatam and of the execution of Veerapandiya Kattabomman, not of the Vellore rising.

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 A, 1 November 1956. Kerala came into being on that day under the States Reorganisation Act, which joined Travancore and Cochin with the Malabar district of the Madras State and the Kasaragod taluk of South Canara, so that the Malayalam speaking areas formed one state. Option B is wrong because 1 May 1960 is the date on which Bombay State was divided into Maharashtra and Gujarat. Option C is wrong because 1 November 1966 is the date Haryana was carved out of Punjab, a different reorganisation ten years later. Option D is wrong because 15 August 1947 is Independence Day, when the princely states of Travancore and Cochin still existed separately. Note that Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh also date from 1 November 1956.

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 C, 30 May 1987. On that day the Goa, Daman and Diu Reorganisation Act of 1987 came into force, Goa became the twenty-fifth state of the Union, and Daman and Diu continued as a separate union territory; 30 May is kept as Goa Statehood Day. Option A, 19 December 1961, is the day Portuguese rule ended and is Goa Liberation Day, but Goa then became a union territory, not a state. Option B, 16 January 1967, is the day of the Goa Opinion Poll, in which Goans voted against merging with Maharashtra; it decided Goa's separate identity but gave it no statehood. Option D, 18 June 1946, is Goa Revolution Day, marking Dr Ram Manohar Lohia's defiance of the Portuguese ban on public meetings at Margao. Keep the four dates in order: 1946, 1961, 1967 and 1987.

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 B, Kuvempu. Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, known by his pen name Kuvempu, received the Jnanpith Award for his epic Sri Ramayana Darshanam and was the first writer in Kannada to be so honoured. He also wrote Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate, which is the state song of Karnataka. Option A is wrong because Shivaram Karanth received the award later, for the novel Mookajjiya Kanasugalu. Option C is wrong because Girish Karnad, the playwright of Tughlaq and Hayavadana, received it in a later decade still. Option D is wrong because U. R. Ananthamurthy, the author of Samskara, also came after Kuvempu. Kannada has a long list of Jnanpith winners, so the question is almost always about who came first. Kuvempu also carried the title Rashtrakavi, the national poet of the state, which is another detail papers use to point at him.

The correct answer is B, Parasnath Hill. Standing in the Giridih district on the Chhotanagpur plateau, Parasnath is the highest point in Jharkhand and is revered by Jains as Sammed Shikhar, the place where a number of their Tirthankaras are believed to have attained liberation, which makes it one of the most important Jain pilgrimage sites in India. Option A is wrong because Netarhat in Latehar district is called the Queen of Chhotanagpur and is famous for its sunrise and sunset points, but it is not the highest. Option C is wrong because Dalma Hill near Jamshedpur gives its name to a wildlife sanctuary. Option D is wrong because Trikut Hill near Deoghar is a pilgrimage spot of modest height. Papers often combine the highest point with the faith it is sacred to, so learn the two together.

The correct answer is B, Thiruvalluvar. The Thirukkural of the poet Thiruvalluvar has 1,330 couplets arranged in 133 chapters of ten each, grouped into three parts on virtue, wealth and love, and the 133 foot statue of Thiruvalluvar off Kanyakumari records those 133 chapters. Option A is wrong because Ilango Adigal wrote Silappadikaram, one of the five great epics of Tamil, built around the story of Kannagi. Option C is wrong because Subramania Bharati was the great modern Tamil poet of the national movement, far later in time. Option D is wrong because Sathanar, also called Sithalai Sathanar, wrote Manimekalai, the Buddhist epic that continues the story of Silappadikaram. Tolkappiyam, by contrast, is the oldest surviving grammar of Tamil. The Kural is among the most widely translated works of Indian literature, and its couplets are often set as quotation based questions.

The correct answer is C, Kanger Valley National Park, in the Bastar region. The park is unusual because it protects limestone caves as well as forest: Kutumsar and Kailash are its best known caves, and it also holds the Tirathgarh waterfall on the Kanger river and the hill myna, the state bird. Option A is wrong because Indravati National Park lies in Bijapur district along the Indravati and is known as a tiger reserve and a refuge of the wild buffalo, the state animal. Option B is wrong because Guru Ghasidas National Park is in the north of the state and is named after the founder of the Satnami sect. Option D is wrong because Sanjay National Park lies in Madhya Pradesh, the area from which the Guru Ghasidas park was separated at reorganisation.

The correct answer is B, E. M. S. Namboodiripad. He became the first Chief Minister of Kerala in 1957, after the first assembly election held in the new state, and his ministry is remembered for its land reform and education bills. Option A is wrong because C. Achutha Menon held the office later, in the nineteen seventies. Option C is wrong because K. Karunakaran led ministries from the nineteen seventies onward and belongs to a later generation of leaders. Option D is wrong because Pattom Thanu Pillai, though a senior figure who had led Travancore Cochin before the state was formed, became Chief Minister of Kerala only afterwards. For the exam, hold 1956 for the formation of the state and 1957 for its first ministry.

The correct answer is C, the Royal Bengal tiger. The Sundarbans, shared between India and Bangladesh, is the one place where tigers have adapted to a tidal mangrove habitat and are known to swim between islands. Sundarbans National Park was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 and the wetland was designated a Ramsar site in 2019. Option A is wrong because the Asiatic lion survives only in the Gir forest of Gujarat. Option B is wrong because the one horned rhinoceros is associated with Kaziranga in Assam and with Jaldapara in northern West Bengal, not with the Sundarbans. Option D is wrong because the snow leopard lives in the high Himalaya, in Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Pair each animal with its one famous habitat.

The correct answer is B, Operation Vijay. Indian air, land and naval forces moved into Goa, Daman and Diu from 17 to 19 December 1961 in Operation Vijay, and 19 December is observed as Goa Liberation Day. The name is also carried by the Kargil operation of 1999, which is the trap in this question, so read the year in the stem. Option A, Operation Polo, was the police action of September 1948 by which Hyderabad was integrated into India. Option C, Operation Meghdoot, was the occupation of the Siachen glacier in 1984. Option D, Operation Cactus, was the Indian intervention in the Maldives in 1988 to put down a coup attempt. All four are real Indian operations, which is why only the date and the place fix the answer.

The correct answer is A, Kharavela. The Hathigumpha or elephant cave inscription, cut into the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar, is the record of Kharavela, the Jain king of the Mahameghavahana line of Kalinga. It is written in the Prakrit language and the Brahmi script, and it lists his conquests, his public works and his patronage of Jainism year by year, which makes it the single most important source for early Odishan history. Option B is wrong because Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty began the Jagannath temple at Puri in the twelfth century. Option C is wrong because Narasimhadeva I, of the same dynasty, built the Sun Temple at Konark in the thirteenth century. Option D is wrong because Mahendravarman I was a Pallava ruler of Kanchi in the south. The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri, with their rock cut Jain cells, go with this question.

The correct answer is B, the Manchester of South India. Coimbatore, on the Noyyal river below the Palakkad Gap, earned the name from its cotton mills, textile machinery works and pump industry, and the nearby Tiruppur is the knitwear and hosiery centre. Option A is wrong because the Detroit of India is Chennai, for the car and commercial vehicle plants clustered around it. Option C is wrong because Little Japan is the nickname of Sivakasi, the town of fireworks, matches and printing presses in the south of the state. Option D is wrong because the sea gateway of Tamil Nadu is Thoothukudi or Tuticorin, the port on the Gulf of Mannar known for salt pans and pearl fishery. Examiners like to shuffle these four nicknames, so each should be fixed to its own town.

The correct answer is C, Periyar. The Periyar rises in the Western Ghats and flows west to the Arabian Sea, and it carries both the Idukki arch dam and the Mullaperiyar dam, the second of which is worked by Tamil Nadu under an old lease. Option A is wrong, but only by one place: the Bharathappuzha, also called the Nila, is the second longest river of the state and flows through Palakkad and Thrissur. Option B is wrong because the Pamba, the third in length, is the river of Sabarimala and of the Aranmula boat race. Option D is wrong because the Chaliyar flows through Malappuram and Kozhikode and is shorter than these. Remember that forty one of Kerala's rivers flow west and only three flow east.

The correct answer is D, the Mandovi. Panaji, also called Panjim, stands on the left bank of the Mandovi, known in Goa as the Mhadei, near the point where the river meets the Arabian Sea; Old Goa lies a short way upstream on the same river. Option A, the Zuari, is wrong although it is the largest river of the state; Mormugao port and the town of Vasco da Gama lie at its mouth, not the capital. Option B, the Terekhol, is wrong; it is the small river on the northern border with Maharashtra, with the Terekhol fort at its mouth. Option C, the Sal, is wrong; it is a short river in South Goa near Mobor and Betul. Remember also that the Dudhsagar Falls are on the Mandovi and that the Cumbarjua canal joins the Mandovi to the Zuari.

The correct answer is B, Kalpakkam. Kalpakkam, on the coast south of Chennai, carries the Madras Atomic Power Station with its two indigenous pressurised heavy water reactors and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, the centre of India's fast breeder reactor programme under the Department of Atomic Energy. Option A is wrong because Kudankulam in the far south of the state is the site of the other nuclear station of Tamil Nadu, built with Russian collaboration and using light water reactors. Option C is wrong because Neyveli is the lignite field and thermal power complex of NLC India, which burns coal rather than splitting atoms. Option D is wrong because Mahendragiri holds the propulsion complex of the Indian Space Research Organisation, where rocket engines are tested. Kalpakkam also carries the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor project, which makes it the centre of the second stage of India's three stage nuclear programme.