Indian States & UTs Mixed Quiz: Set 32

The correct answer is B, Calcutta High Court. The union territory has no High Court of its own and comes under the jurisdiction of the Calcutta High Court, which holds a circuit bench in the territorial capital so that litigants do not have to travel to the mainland for every hearing. The link is historical, since the islands were administered from Bengal in the colonial period.

Option A, Madras High Court, has jurisdiction over Puducherry and is the usual wrong answer here because of the geographical closeness of the islands to the southern coast. Option C, Andhra Pradesh High Court, and option D, Orissa High Court, have no such jurisdiction. Remember the related pairings for union territories: Delhi has its own High Court, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh share one, Lakshadweep comes under Kerala, Puducherry under Madras, and Andaman and Nicobar under Calcutta.

The correct answer is C, Little Andaman and Car Nicobar. The Ten Degree Channel runs along the ten degree north parallel and divides the Andaman group from the Nicobar group, with Little Andaman on its northern side and Car Nicobar on its southern side. It is a busy sea lane and the single most asked channel from this topic.

Option A describes the Coco Channel, which lies between North Andaman and the Coco Islands belonging to Myanmar. Option B describes Duncan Passage, between South Andaman and Little Andaman. Option D describes the Nine Degree Channel, which is in Lakshadweep and separates Minicoy from the main group of those islands; mixing up the Nine Degree and Ten Degree Channels is the commonest mistake in this question, so link nine with Lakshadweep and ten with Andaman and Nicobar.

The correct answer is C, 2006. Parliament passed the Pondicherry (Alteration of Name) Act in 2006, replacing the anglicised Pondicherry with the Tamil original Puducherry, which means the new village or new town. The change was one of name alone and did not alter the territory’s status or boundaries.

Option A, 1996, is the year Madras became Chennai, a renaming of the neighbouring state capital that is often mixed up with this one. Option B, 2001, is the year Calcutta became Kolkata. Option D, 2011, is the year Orissa became Odisha and its language Odia. Place Puducherry in the middle of that sequence: Bombay to Mumbai in 1995, Madras to Chennai in 1996, Calcutta to Kolkata in 2001, Pondicherry to Puducherry in 2006, Orissa to Odisha in 2011 and Bangalore to Bengaluru in 2014.

The correct answer is B, 1 November 1954. On that day France handed over the administration of Pondicherry, Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam, and India began governing them, although France still held sovereignty in law. This is the de facto transfer that exams ask about.

Option A, 15 August 1947, is the date of Indian independence from British rule; the French settlements were untouched by it and stayed French for seven more years. Option C, 16 August 1962, is a real date but a different one: it is the de jure transfer, when the instruments of ratification of the treaty of cession were exchanged and the territory became legally Indian, the same year the Fourteenth Amendment listed it as a union territory. Option D belongs to the renaming of Pondicherry as Puducherry in 2006, which changed the name and nothing else. Keep 1954 for the handover and 1962 for the law.

The correct answer is B, Punjab and Haryana. When Haryana was carved out of Punjab on 1 November 1966, the new state had no capital of its own, so the existing capital city was made a Union Territory and declared the joint capital of both states. The Capitol Complex in Sector 1 houses the assemblies and secretariats of the two states, and the common Punjab and Haryana High Court sits in the same city.

Option A is wrong because the capital of Himachal Pradesh is Shimla, which also served as the summer capital of British India. Option C fails for the same reason, and Haryana has no capital other than Chandigarh. Option D is wrong because the capital of Rajasthan is Jaipur. Remember the unique feature: Chandigarh is the only Union Territory that is the capital of two states while belonging administratively to neither, which is why its administration is run by the Centre and not by either state government.

The correct answer is D, West Bengal. West Bengal had a Legislative Council in the years after independence but abolished it in 1969, and its legislature has been unicameral since then, consisting of the Governor and the Legislative Assembly alone. Proposals to revive the Council have been moved but a revival needs a resolution of the Assembly followed by an Act of Parliament under Article 169. Option A is wrong because Bihar has a Vidhan Parishad, one of the oldest in the country. Option B is wrong because Karnataka has a Vidhan Parishad, as does the southern neighbour Telangana. Option C is wrong because Maharashtra has a Vidhan Parishad, and it is one of the six states with a second chamber along with Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.

The correct answer is B, Andhra Pradesh. It was created as Andhra State on 1 October 1953 by separating the Telugu-speaking districts of the old Madras State. The immediate trigger was the fast unto death of Potti Sriramulu, who died in December 1952 and whose death turned the demand into a mass agitation. Once the government conceded one linguistic state it had to redraw the whole map, so the States Reorganisation Commission under Fazl Ali was appointed in 1953 and the States Reorganisation Act was passed in 1956.

Option A is wrong because Kerala was formed on 1 November 1956 under that Act, by joining Travancore-Cochin with the Malabar region. Option C is wrong because Madras State was only renamed Tamil Nadu, in 1969; it was not a newly created linguistic state. Option D is wrong because Mysore State was reorganised in 1956 and renamed Karnataka in 1973. The usual trap is the pair of dates 1953 and 1956, so remember both.

The correct answer is A, Latehar. Betla National Park lies in the Latehar district on the Chhotanagpur plateau and forms the core of the Palamu Tiger Reserve, which was among the first group of tiger reserves notified when Project Tiger was launched in 1973 and is often cited as the place where an early census of tigers by pugmark counting was attempted. Option B is wrong because Giridih is the district of Parasnath Hill. Option C is wrong because Dumka is the sub-capital and headquarters of Santhal Pargana. Option D is wrong because Bokaro is known for its steel plant and for the Bokaro thermal power station. The state's other protected areas, the Hazaribagh and Dalma wildlife sanctuaries, are asked in the same group, so keep the district with each name.

The correct answer is A, Wandoor, South Andaman. The Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park, set up near Wandoor on the south-western coast of South Andaman, protects a stretch of coral reefs, mangroves and small islands along with the turtles, molluscs and reef fish that live there. It is the best known marine protected area of the territory and is often visited for glass-bottom boat viewing of the reefs.

Option B, Campbell Bay, in Great Nicobar, is the location of Campbell Bay National Park, a different protected area, and Galathea National Park is also on that island. Option C, Diglipur, in North Andaman, is close to Saddle Peak National Park, which is a terrestrial park, not a marine one. Option D, Car Nicobar, is the headquarters of the Nicobar district and has no national park of this name. The other marine park to remember is Rani Jhansi Marine National Park.

The correct answer is B, Veer Narayan Singh. The zamindar of Sonakhan opened grain stores for a famine stricken countryside during the revolt of 1857, was arrested for it, and was hanged at Raipur, which is why he is honoured as the first martyr of Chhattisgarh. Option A is wrong because Gundadhur led the Bhumkal rebellion of 1910 in Bastar against forest and revenue policy, half a century later. Option C is wrong because Birsa Munda led the Munda rising in the Chotanagpur region of present day Jharkhand at the close of the nineteenth century, and the state of Jharkhand was formed on his birth anniversary. Option D is wrong because Pandit Sundarlal Sharma was a social reformer and the pioneer of the demand for a separate Chhattisgarh, not a figure of 1857.

The correct answer is A, Puducherry. Garadi is danced by men dressed as the vanaras, the monkey warriors of the Ramayana, who move in a circle to drums and anklets through the night at temple festivals; it is the folk form most closely tied to the territory. Kolattam, played with sticks, and Poikal Kudirai, the dummy horse dance, are also performed there.

Option B, Lakshadweep, has its own forms such as Lava and Parichakali, performed by its Malayalam-speaking island communities. Option C, Chandigarh, is a planned city of the 1950s with no folk dance of its own; the bhangra and giddha seen there belong to Punjab and Haryana. Option D, Ladakh, is known for Jabro, the dance of the Changthang nomads, and for Shondol, the royal dance of Leh. Fix Garadi with Puducherry and the Ramayana costume.

The correct answer is B, Darjeeling tea. Grown on the slopes of the Darjeeling hills in northern West Bengal, it was the first product in India to be registered under the geographical indications system, which protects a name that identifies goods as coming from a particular place and having qualities owing to that origin. West Bengal is also the second largest tea producing state after Assam and the largest producer of jute. Option A is wrong because basmati rice was registered much later and only after prolonged dispute. Option C is wrong because Kanchipuram silk from Tamil Nadu, though an early registration, was not the first. Option D is wrong because the Alphonso mango of Maharashtra received its tag considerably later. A second fact worth carrying with this one is that West Bengal is also the largest producer of jute in India, so a question on the state’s crops can be answered from the same cluster.

The correct answer is B, Le Corbusier. The Swiss-French architect, whose real name was Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, took charge of the project after the first team broke up and gave the city its grid of sectors, its hierarchy of roads and the monumental buildings of the Capitol Complex. He worked with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret and the English architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew.

Option A, Albert Mayer, is the closest wrong answer: the American planner did prepare the first plan, with the Polish architect Matthew Nowicki, but after Nowicki died in an air crash in 1950 Mayer withdrew and the commission passed to Le Corbusier. Option C, Edwin Lutyens, with Herbert Baker, designed New Delhi, a very different imperial city of avenues and vistas. Option D, Patrick Geddes, was a Scottish town planner who worked on Indian city reports in the early twentieth century but had no part in Chandigarh.

The correct answer is B, Deomali. Deomali, in the Koraput district of southern Odisha, rises to about one thousand six hundred and seventy two metres and is the highest point in the state. It stands in the Chandragiri and Pottangi stretch of the Eastern Ghats, where the hills are at their broadest and highest in Odisha. Option A is wrong because Mahendragiri, in the Gajapati district, is a well known and sacred peak of the Eastern Ghats but lower than Deomali. Option C is wrong because Malayagiri, in the Angul district, is another notable hill of the state and again lower. Option D is wrong because the Gandhamardan hills, on the Bargarh and Balangir border, are famous for their medicinal plants and their Buddhist associations, not for their height. The Eastern Ghats in Odisha are broken by the gorges of the Mahanadi and the Brahmani, which is why no single long range runs through the state.

The correct answer is C, Rajasthan. Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the Panchayati Raj system at Nagaur on 2 October 1959, putting into practice the three-tier design recommended by the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee of 1957: the gram panchayat at the village level, the panchayat samiti at the block level and the zila parishad at the district level.

Option A is the classic distractor, because Andhra Pradesh adopted the system within weeks, on 1 November 1959, and is therefore the second state, not the first. Option D is wrong because Maharashtra introduced its own pattern in the early 1960s, on the recommendation of the Vasantrao Naik Committee, a scheme remembered for giving real powers to the zila parishad. Option B is wrong for the same reason of date; Gujarat followed Maharashtra. Note also that panchayats got constitutional status only with the 73rd Amendment, which added Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule and came into force in 1993.

The correct answer is A, Kurnool. The Belum Caves lie in the Kurnool region of Rayalaseema and are the longest caves in the plains of the subcontinent, cut in limestone by an underground stream, with long galleries, siphons and a deep point called Pataalaganga. Option B is wrong because Visakhapatnam district holds the Borra Caves in the Araku hills, which are also limestone caves but on the Gosthani river and in the Eastern Ghats, not in the plains. Option C is wrong because Guntur is known for the Amaravati stupa, the Undavalli rock-cut caves and its chilli market rather than for a cave system of this size. Option D is wrong because Chittoor is associated with Tirupati, Srikalahasti and the Horsley Hills. Keep Belum in Kurnool and Borra in the Araku hills apart.

The correct answer is A, its population density was the lowest among the union territories. With a population of 3,80,581 spread over 8,249 square kilometres, the territory recorded a density of only 46 persons per square kilometre at the 2011 Census, by far the lowest among the union territories, because most of its land is forest and most of its islands are uninhabited.

Option B is wrong because its literacy rate of 86.27 per cent was well above the national figure and among the highest in the country. Option C is wrong because the sex ratio was 876 females per thousand males, below the national average, a legacy of migration of working men to the islands. Option D is wrong because Delhi had the largest population among the union territories by a very wide margin, while the Andaman and Nicobar Islands had one of the smallest.

The correct answer is C, Tamil Nadu. Oussudu Lake lies a few kilometres west of the territorial capital, astride the boundary between the Puducherry region and Tamil Nadu. It is an old irrigation tank that has become the main wetland of the territory and an important wintering ground for migratory waterbirds, which is why it has been given sanctuary status; Puducherry has no national park.

Option A, Kerala, holds the Mahe region of the territory but no part of this lake; its own famous wetlands are Vembanad and Sasthamkotta. Option B, Karnataka, does not border any region of Puducherry at all, which makes it the easiest option to rule out. Option D, Andhra Pradesh, surrounds the Yanam enclave, and its large lake is Kolleru, a different wetland in the Krishna and Godavari delta. Link Oussudu with Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.

The correct answer is C, 1 November 1966. On that day the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966 came into force, Haryana was created as a separate state out of Punjab on a largely linguistic basis, parts of the hill areas went to Himachal Pradesh, and the capital city was constituted a Union Territory and made the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana.

Option A, 15 August 1947, is Independence Day, when the city did not even exist; its construction began in the early 1950s. Option B, 26 January 1950, is the day the Constitution came into force. Option D, 1 November 2000, is a tempting distractor because three states, Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand, were created in that year, and Chhattisgarh indeed came into being on 1 November 2000; but that has nothing to do with Chandigarh. Note the coincidence of dates that examiners exploit: 1 November is also the day Haryana was formed and the day Karnataka marks its formation.

The correct answer is B, Maharashtra, which set up the office of Lokayukta in 1971, the first state to bring the institution into working existence. The idea came from the First Administrative Reforms Commission, which recommended a Lokpal at the Centre and a Lokayukta in the states to look into complaints of corruption and maladministration against public functionaries.

Option A is the trap, and it is right for a different question: Odisha passed the first Lokayukta Act, in 1970, but its institution began functioning later, so the Act and the office have different answers. Options C and D are wrong on dates; Bihar and Kerala legislated afterwards, Kerala only at the end of the 1990s. Read such questions word by word, because papers alternate between "first state to pass the Lokayukta Act" and "first state to appoint a Lokayukta". Remember too that the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act was enacted at the Centre only in 2013.