Indian States & UTs Mixed Quiz: Set 27

The correct answer is B, Zoji La. Zoji La lies on the Srinagar–Leh highway between Sonamarg and Drass and is the gateway from the Kashmir valley to Ladakh; the Zojila tunnel is being built beneath it to keep the road open through winter. Option A is wrong because the Banihal pass is on the Pir Panjal and connects Jammu with the Kashmir valley, with the Jawahar Tunnel of 1956 running below it. Option C is wrong because Khardung La lies north of Leh and connects Leh with the Nubra valley on the way towards Siachen, so it is within Ladakh. Option D is wrong because Chang La connects Leh with Pangong Tso and the Changthang plateau, again a pass inside Ladakh and not the entry from the valley.

The correct answer is C, 31 October 2019. The Act was passed by Parliament in August 2019 but the appointed day on which the former State ceased to exist and the two Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and of Ladakh came into being was 31 October 2019. Option A is wrong because 5 August 2019 is the date of the Presidential Orders by which Article 370 and Article 35A ceased to operate; the reorganisation followed later. Option B is wrong because 9 August 2019 is the date the Act received the President’s assent, which is not the same as its commencement. Option D is wrong because 26 January 2020 is the day on which Dadra and Nagar Haveli merged with Daman and Diu, an unrelated reorganisation. Keep 5 August, 9 August and 31 October apart, because papers use all three as options.

The correct answer is C, Mahe. Puducherry is made up of four non-contiguous districts, and Mahe is the one on the Malabar coast surrounded by Kerala. Option A is wrong because Karaikal lies on the Coromandel coast within Tamil Nadu, south of Puducherry town. Option B is wrong because Yanam lies within Andhra Pradesh, on the Godavari delta. Option D is wrong because the Puducherry district itself lies within Tamil Nadu on the Coromandel coast and is the seat of the Union Territory’s government. All four were French settlements, transferred de facto in 1954 and in law by the Treaty of Cession of 1962, after which the Fourteenth Amendment Act of 1962 provided for the legislature and Puducherry became a Union Territory in 1963. Tamil is its official language, French retains a special place, and Pondicherry was renamed Puducherry in 2006.

The correct answer is A, the Treaty of Yandabo of 1826. It ended the First Anglo-Burmese War, and under it the Burmese gave up their claims to Assam, Manipur, Arakan and Tenasserim, so Assam came under the East India Company. Option B is wrong; the Treaty of Amritsar of 1846 transferred Kashmir to Gulab Singh after the First Anglo-Sikh War. Option C is wrong because the Treaty of Bassein of 1802 brought the Peshwa into subsidiary alliance and precipitated the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Option D is wrong since the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765 followed the Battle of Buxar and settled affairs with the Mughal emperor and the Nawab of Awadh. Yandabo is the one to remember for the north-east, because the same treaty also brought Manipur and Arakan into the British sphere.

The correct answer is A, Pampore. Pampore in Pulwama district, on the karewa uplands beside the Jhelum, produces most of Kashmir’s saffron and is called the saffron town of India; the crop received its Geographical Indication tag in 2020 for its high crocin content and deep colour. Option B is wrong because Sopore in Baramulla district is known as the apple town of Kashmir, not for saffron. Option C is wrong because Baramulla is the district through which the Jhelum leaves the valley and is known for Kazinag National Park and the markhor. Option D is wrong because Anantnag is the district of Verinag, where the Jhelum rises, and of the Martand sun temple built by Lalitaditya Muktapida. Fix the pairs: Pampore for saffron, Sopore for apples.

The correct answer is A, phumdi. A phumdi is a mat of soil, plant matter and organic debris in various stages of decay that floats on the surface of Loktak Lake in Manipur; the largest of them carries Keibul Lamjao National Park, and fishermen build circular enclosures called athaphums from them. Option B is wrong; a beel is an oxbow lake or a wetland of the Brahmaputra and Ganga floodplains, the word used in Assam and Bengal, as in Deepor Beel near Guwahati. Option C is wrong; a chaur is a seasonal waterlogged depression of north Bihar, such as the Kabar Taal in Begusarai. Option D is wrong; jheel is only the general Hindi word for a lake or a marsh and names no particular formation. The specific vocabulary of each region is exactly what this kind of question tests.

The correct answer is B, Le Corbusier. The first plan for Chandigarh was prepared by Albert Mayer with Matthew Nowicki, and after Nowicki died in an air crash the work passed to the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, assisted by Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. His Capitol Complex, with the Secretariat, the Assembly, the High Court and the Open Hand monument, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016. Option A is wrong because Edwin Lutyens planned New Delhi, with the Viceroy’s House and the National Archives building. Option C is wrong because Herbert Baker worked with Lutyens on New Delhi’s Secretariat blocks. Option D is wrong because Charles Correa was a later Indian architect, known for Bharat Bhavan at Bhopal and Jawahar Kala Kendra at Jaipur.

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, Kalhana. Kalhana wrote the Rajatarangini in Sanskrit verse in the twelfth century as a history of the rulers of Kashmir from legendary times to his own day, and it is regarded as the earliest connected historical narrative produced in India; later writers continued it. Option A is wrong because Bilhana was the Kashmiri poet who went to the Chalukya court and wrote the Vikramankadevacharita in praise of Vikramaditya VI. Option C is wrong because Kshemendra was an earlier Kashmiri writer known for the Brihatkathamanjari and for works on poetics. Option D is wrong because Somadeva wrote the Kathasaritsagara, a vast collection of tales drawn from the Brihatkatha tradition and not a chronicle of kings. Note also that the Rajatarangini is the source from which examiners draw Lalitaditya Muktapida of the Karkota dynasty and Avantivarman of the Utpala dynasty.

The correct answer is B, Namdapha National Park. Namdapha lies in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh near the Myanmar border, is the largest national park in north-east India, and is famous as the one protected area said to hold four big cats: the tiger, the leopard, the snow leopard and the clouded leopard. Option A, Kaziranga, is wrong; it is the one-horned rhinoceros park of Assam, on the Brahmaputra, and a World Heritage Site. Option C, Manas, is wrong; it too lies in Assam, on the border with Bhutan, and is both a tiger reserve and a World Heritage Site. Option D, Keibul Lamjao, is wrong; it is the floating park on Loktak lake in Manipur, home of the sangai deer. Mouling in Upper Siang is the second national park of Arunachal Pradesh, and Pakke and Kamlang are its other tiger reserves.

The correct answer is B, the Sixty-ninth Amendment Act, 1991. It inserted Article 239AA, renamed the Union Territory of Delhi as the National Capital Territory of Delhi and provided for a Legislative Assembly of seventy seats and a Council of Ministers of not more than ten per cent of the total members, that is seven. The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act, 1991 carried it into effect, leaving public order, police and land with the Union. Option A is wrong because the Fourteenth Amendment of 1962 concerned Puducherry’s legislature and the former French territories. Option C is wrong because the Seventy-fourth Amendment of 1992 is about urban local bodies and added the Twelfth Schedule. Option D is wrong because the Tenth Amendment of 1961 added Dadra and Nagar Haveli to the Constitution.

The correct answer is B, Beas Kund near the Rohtang Pass. The Beas, the Vipasha of the Vedas, rises at Beas Kund on the southern side of the Rohtang Pass, flows past Manali, Kullu and Mandi, is dammed at Pandoh and Pong in Kangra and finally joins the Sutlej at Harike in Punjab. Option A is wrong because Bara Bhangal in Kangra is the source of the Ravi, the Iravati. Option C is wrong because the Chandra and the Bhaga meet at Tandi in Lahaul to form the Chandrabhaga, which becomes the Chenab. Option D is wrong because Renuka is the largest natural lake of the state and a Ramsar site, not a river source. The Yamuna only enters the state in Sirmaur. Of the five rivers, only the Beas rises and ends its Himachal course wholly within the state, which is why its source is asked so often.

The correct answer is B, Jahangir. Jahangir laid out the Shalimar Bagh on the shore of the Dal lake in 1619 for Nur Jahan, and it is the largest of the Mughal gardens of Srinagar, built on terraces with a central water channel. Option A is wrong because Akbar annexed Kashmir in 1586 and built the Hari Parbat fort wall at Srinagar, but the Shalimar garden came after him. Option C is wrong because Chashma Shahi was laid out in the reign of Shah Jahan, and he is also linked with the Pari Mahal; Shalimar is his father’s work. Option D is wrong because Aurangzeb built no garden in Kashmir of this kind. Learn the three together: Shalimar by Jahangir in 1619, Nishat by Asaf Khan in 1633 and Chashma Shahi under Shah Jahan, all of them terraced char bagh gardens on the slopes above the Dal lake, with Pari Mahal higher up the same ridge.

The correct answer is B, Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu. The Santhal Hul of 1855 and 1856 was raised in the Santhal Pargana region against revenue officials, moneylenders and the police, and was led by Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu along with their brothers Chand and Bhairav; its suppression led the colonial government to create a separately administered Santhal Pargana. Option A is wrong because Buddhu Bhagat was a leader of the Kol Uprising of 1831 and 1832 and Jatra Oraon began the Tana Bhagat movement in 1914. Option C is wrong because Tilka Manjhi led an earlier rising in the Bhagalpur region and Birsa Munda belongs to 1899 and 1900. Option D is wrong because Jaipal Singh Munda and later leaders belong to the political movement for a separate state, not to a nineteenth century rebellion.

The correct answer is B, 26 January 2020. The Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu (Merger of Union Territories) Act, 2019 merged the two into one Union Territory with effect from 26 January 2020, with Daman as its headquarters and Silvassa as the headquarters of the Dadra and Nagar Haveli district. Option A is wrong because 31 October 2019 is the day the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and of Ladakh came into being. Option C is wrong because 30 May 1987 is the day Goa became a State, after which Daman and Diu continued as a separate Union Territory. Option D is wrong because 1 November 2000 is the day Chhattisgarh was created. Keep 31 October 2019 and 26 January 2020 apart, as papers use them as a pair.

The correct answer is C, the Soviet Union. The Bhilai Steel Plant in Durg district was built with Soviet collaboration and began production in 1959; it is run today by the Steel Authority of India and is known above all for the long rails it supplies to Indian Railways. Option A is wrong because West German collaboration built the Rourkela Steel Plant in Odisha, the first of the public sector plants of that era. Option B is wrong because British collaboration built the Durgapur Steel Plant in West Bengal. Option D is wrong because the Soviet Union, not Japan, was the partner here, although Japanese assistance came later to other Indian industry; the Bokaro Steel Plant in Jharkhand was also built with Soviet help. The three plants of the Second Five Year Plan, Rourkela, Bhilai and Durgapur, are asked as a set with their partner countries.

The correct answer is B, the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab. The treaty signed in 1960 with the World Bank as a party gave the three western rivers to Pakistan and the three eastern rivers, the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej, to India for unrestricted use. India retains non-consumptive rights, limited storage and run-of-the-river hydro power on the western rivers, which is why the Salal, Baglihar and Dulhasti projects on the Chenab and the Uri project on the Jhelum are built as run-of-the-river schemes. Option A is wrong because those three are precisely the eastern rivers given to India. Options C and D are wrong because each mixes an eastern river, the Ravi, the Beas or the Sutlej, into the western group. The division into three and three is the fact to carry.

The correct answer is C, the Sentinelese. The Sentinelese live on North Sentinel Island, have avoided contact with the outside world and are one of the particularly vulnerable tribal groups of the Territory, with the island closed to visitors by law. Option A is wrong because the Shompen live in the interior of Great Nicobar, not on North Sentinel. Option B is wrong because the Onge live on Little Andaman, chiefly at Dugong Creek and South Bay. Option D is wrong because the Nicobarese are the largest tribal community of the Nicobar group and are not classed among the particularly vulnerable groups. The five particularly vulnerable tribal groups of the islands are the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, the Sentinelese and the Shompen, and all five are counted among the seventy-five such groups recognised across India.

The correct answer is B, Hanle. Hanle in eastern Ladakh, within the Changthang Cold Desert Wildlife Sanctuary, already hosts the Indian Astronomical Observatory of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and the surrounding area was notified in 2022 as India’s first Dark Sky Reserve to keep artificial light from spoiling the night sky for astronomy and for astro-tourism. Option A is wrong because Hunder in the Nubra valley is known for its sand dunes and for the double-humped Bactrian camel. Option C is wrong because Diskit in the Nubra valley has the oldest and largest monastery of that valley with its Maitreya statue. Option D is wrong because Drass, on the road beyond Zoji La, is known as one of the coldest inhabited places in India and for the Kargil war memorial nearby.

The correct answer is B, Mirra Alfassa, known as the Mother. She founded Auroville in 1968 as an international township where people of all countries could live in peace, and soil from many nations was placed in an urn at its inauguration; the Matrimandir is its meditation centre. Option A is wrong because Sri Aurobindo, whose vision inspired the township, had died in 1950; the ashram he settled at Puducherry was founded in 1926. Option C is wrong because Annie Besant led the Theosophical Society at Adyar and the Home Rule movement, which is unconnected. Option D is wrong because Roger Anger was the French architect who designed Auroville and the Matrimandir, so he planned the township but did not found it. Founder and architect are the distinction tested here.