Indian States & UTs Mixed Quiz: Set 33

The correct answer is C, 2016. In that year the Capitol Complex was added to the World Heritage List as part of a transnational serial property titled The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement, which brings together his buildings in several countries. The Chandigarh complex is the only component of that property located in India, which is the point the question usually turns on.

Option A, 2004, is the year the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai was inscribed, and candidates sometimes attach it here. Option B, 2010, is associated with the Jantar Mantar at Jaipur. Option D, 2021, is linked with the Kakatiya Rudreshwara or Ramappa temple in Telangana and the city of Dholavira. A further fact worth holding: this is India's only World Heritage inscription for twentieth-century modern architecture, all the others being ancient, medieval, colonial or natural sites.

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 B, Tamil Nadu, which passed a state Right to Information Act in 1997, the first such law in the country and eight years ahead of the central Right to Information Act of 2005.

Option A is the distractor that catches most students, because the movement for the right to information grew out of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan's agitation in Rajasthan, which demanded the right to inspect records of public works; Rajasthan legislated only afterwards. Option C is wrong on sequence, although Goa passed its own law soon after Tamil Nadu, and Option D is wrong because Karnataka's law came later still. Once the central Act came into force in October 2005, with its Public Information Officers, thirty-day deadline and the Central and State Information Commissions, these state laws were superseded. The exam point to retain is the pair: Tamil Nadu 1997 for the first state law, 2005 for the central Act.

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, Nek Chand Saini. A road inspector in the public works department, he began collecting discarded stones, broken crockery, bangles, tiles and electrical waste in the 1950s and built a secret garden of sculptures on land that was officially a forest buffer. When the authorities found it in the 1970s they chose to protect rather than demolish it, and it was opened to the public in 1976. It is also called the Fifteen Acres and stands near Sukhna Lake.

Option B, Pierre Jeanneret, was Le Corbusier's cousin and the chief architect who stayed on in the city for years, but he designed buildings and furniture, not the Rock Garden. Option C, Jane Drew, was one of the English architects on the planning team. Option D, Satish Gujral, was a noted Indian painter, sculptor and architect best known for designing the Belgian Embassy in New Delhi. The Rock Garden is a favourite example of outsider or self-taught art in general knowledge papers.

The correct answer is B, Saddle Peak. Saddle Peak rises to 732 metres in North Andaman and is the highest point in the whole union territory. It gives its name to Saddle Peak National Park, which protects the tropical evergreen forest on its slopes.

Option A, Mount Thullier, at 642 metres on Great Nicobar, is the highest point of the Nicobar group but not of the territory as a whole; the question is deliberately framed to catch candidates who remember only this name. Option C, Mount Harriet, in South Andaman, is a well known hill and a national park, since renamed Mount Manipur National Park, but it is much lower. Option D, Mount Diavolo, is a hill in Middle Andaman and is also lower than Saddle Peak. Learn the pair of figures together: 732 metres for Saddle Peak and 642 metres for Mount Thullier.

The correct answer is C, Sikkim, declared India's first fully organic state in 2016 after more than a decade of phasing chemical fertilisers and pesticides off its farmland and training farmers in organic practice. The policy won Sikkim the Future Policy Gold Award given by the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2018.

The same small Himalayan state holds two more firsts worth remembering: it banned plastic carry bags as early as 1998, and it was the first state declared free of open defecation. Options A, B and D are wrong because, although Kerala, Mizoram and Himachal Pradesh all promote organic and natural farming and have large chemical-free areas, none of them has been declared fully organic. Add one date to the set: Sikkim was merged into the Indian Union as a state in 1975 by the 36th Constitutional Amendment, which also deleted its earlier status as an associate state.

The correct answer is C, the Fourteenth Amendment Act, passed in 1962. It listed Pondicherry in the First Schedule as a union territory after the legal transfer from France, and inserted Article 239A, which empowers Parliament to create by law a legislature and a Council of Ministers for the territory. Parliament exercised that power through the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963.

Option A, the Seventh Amendment of 1956, gave effect to the States Reorganisation Act and redrew states on linguistic lines, which is why candidates confuse it with this one. Option B, the Twelfth Amendment of 1962, incorporated Goa, Daman and Diu into the Union after their liberation; the same year, a different amendment. Option D, the Thirty-sixth Amendment of 1975, made Sikkim a full state. Also keep Article 239A, for Puducherry, apart from Article 239AA, which the Sixty-ninth Amendment inserted for Delhi.

The correct answer is B, the temple of the goddess Chandi near the site. Chandi Mandir, a temple of the goddess Chandi, a form of Durga, stands near the city in what is now the Panchkula district of Haryana. The word garh, meaning a fort or a fortress, was joined to the name of the deity, so Chandigarh means the fort of Chandi. The town of Chandimandir beside the temple is also known as the headquarters of the Army's Western Command.

Option A is wrong because no Mughal fort gave the city its name; the site was farmland and villages before 1950. Option C is wrong because the two watercourses beside the city are the seasonal streams called the Sukhna Choe and the Patiali Rao, and the city is not named after either. Option D is wrong because the city was planned and named after Independence, not by the colonial government. Many north Indian place names end in garh, such as Aligarh and Ramgarh, and the ending always indicates a fort.

The correct answer is B, Article 169. It empowers Parliament by law to abolish an existing Legislative Council or to create one where none exists, but only if the Legislative Assembly of the state first passes a resolution supported by a majority of the total membership of the House and by not less than two-thirds of the members present and voting. Such a law is not treated as a constitutional amendment under Article 368. Option A is wrong because Article 168 merely says what a state legislature consists of, the Governor with one house or two. Option C is wrong because Article 171 lays down the size and composition of a Council once it exists. Option D is wrong because Article 172 fixes the duration of the houses, giving the Assembly five years and making the Council a permanent body that is not subject to dissolution.

The correct answer is C, Kerala, declared India's first fully literate state in 1991 at the end of a total literacy campaign run through village-level volunteer teaching. The campaign had first been tested in Ernakulam, which became the first fully literate district in the country in 1990, and the model was later used by the National Literacy Mission elsewhere.

Option A is the strongest distractor, because Mizoram has stood second to Kerala in literacy in the census and is sometimes misremembered as first; it was never declared fully literate before Kerala. Option B is wrong because Goa, although high in literacy, has no such declaration, and Option D is wrong because Tamil Nadu's famous first is a different one, the statewide school noon-meal programme that preceded the national mid-day meal scheme. Kerala has reported the highest literacy rate among the states in every census since 1991, which is the fact matching questions usually test.

The correct answer is B, Kakatiya. The temple at Palampet in Mulugu district was built in 1213 during the reign of the Kakatiya ruler Ganapati Deva, by his general Recherla Rudra, and it is dedicated to Shiva as Rudreswara. It is unusual in being named after Ramappa, the sculptor who worked on it. Its floating bricks, its polished black basalt pillars and its bracket figures made it the choice for inscription on the World Heritage List in 2021.

Option A, the Satavahanas, ruled the Deccan in the early centuries of the common era, a thousand years before this temple. Option C, the Qutb Shahis, came to Golconda in 1518 and built the Charminar and the Golconda tombs, which are Indo-Islamic rather than temple architecture. Option D, the Chalukyas, built at Badami, Pattadakal and Aihole in Karnataka, and their style is often confused with Kakatiya work.

The correct answer is B, the Punjab and Haryana High Court. It is a common High Court exercising jurisdiction over the states of Punjab and Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh, and its building in the Capitol Complex is one of Le Corbusier's three monumental works there. A common High Court for more than one state is permitted by Article 231 of the Constitution.

Option A, the Delhi High Court, sits at New Delhi and has jurisdiction over the National Capital Territory. Option C, the Himachal Pradesh High Court, sits at Shimla. Option D, the Rajasthan High Court, has its principal seat at Jodhpur with a bench at Jaipur, a pairing often asked in its own right. The useful general point is that several Indian High Courts serve more than one unit: besides this one, the Guwahati High Court and the High Courts at Kolkata and at Chennai have historically covered neighbouring territories.

The correct answer is B, Shivanasamudra. The hydroelectric station built at Shivanasamudra on the Kaveri in 1902 was the first of its kind in Asia, and its power was carried to the Kolar Gold Fields, then one of the deepest mining operations in the world, over what was at the time the longest transmission line in the country. Option A is wrong because Jog on the Sharavathi is famous for its waterfall and has later generating capacity, but it was not the first. Option C is wrong because Linganamakki is the reservoir built much later on the Sharavathi to regulate water for the Sharavathi generating stations. Option D is wrong because Hosapete is the site of the Tungabhadra dam, an irrigation and power project of the years after independence.

The correct answer is B, Haryana, which reported electricity in every one of its villages in 1970, within four years of being carved out of Punjab on 1 November 1966. The achievement is a standard static GK line about the state, and it is usually paired with a second first: Haryana was also the first state to replace sales tax with Value Added Tax, on 1 April 2003, ahead of the wider rollout of VAT from 2005.

Option A is wrong although Punjab, the parent state, electrified its villages soon afterwards. Option C is wrong because Kerala's firsts lie in literacy rather than in power supply, and Option D is wrong because Gujarat's well-known energy milestones, such as separating agricultural feeders under the Jyotigram scheme, came decades later. Note that rural electrification counts a village as electrified when supply reaches it, not every household.

The correct answer is A, the Nilgiri tahr. The Nilgiri tahr, a wild goat found only on the higher slopes of the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, is the state animal of Tamil Nadu, and the Mukurthi national park and the Anamalai hills are its strongholds. Option B is wrong because the gaur or Indian bison is the state animal of Goa and of Bihar, though it does live in the forests of Tamil Nadu. Option C is wrong because the blackbuck is the state animal of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. Option D is wrong because the Indian elephant is the state animal of Kerala, Karnataka and Jharkhand, and is the national heritage animal of India. The state bird of Tamil Nadu is the emerald dove, its tree the palmyra palm and its flower the glory lily.

The correct answer is B, Sector 13. The city's sectors are numbered in sequence, but the number thirteen was deliberately left out because it is widely regarded as unlucky, so the numbering jumps from Sector 12 to Sector 14. Sector 14 is the one occupied largely by Panjab University, and the omission is a standard piece of trivia about the plan.

Option A, Sector 11, exists and is a residential sector with colleges. Option C, Sector 15, exists and is known for student housing near the university. Option D, Sector 17, very much exists and is the city centre, the commercial and administrative heart of the plan, conceived by Le Corbusier as a pedestrian plaza. Learn the three best-known sector numbers together: Sector 1 for the Capitol Complex, Sector 10 for the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Sector 16 for the Rose Garden, and Sector 17 for the city centre, with no Sector 13 at all.

The correct answer is C, Assam, whose legislature ratified the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-second Amendment) Bill on 12 August 2016, becoming the first state to do so. Ratification by the legislatures of at least half the states is required under Article 368(2) for amendments that touch the federal structure, and the Bill became the Constitution (One Hundred and First Amendment) Act, 2016, after which the Goods and Services Tax came into force on 1 July 2017.

Option A is the trap, because Bihar ratified the Bill a few days later and is the second state, not the first. Options B and D are wrong for the same reason of sequence; Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat were among the states that followed within weeks. Remember the chain of three facts together: Assam first, the 101st Amendment Act, and the GST Council created under Article 279A.

The correct answer is B, a man-made rainfed reservoir created in 1958. It was formed by damming the Sukhna Choe, a seasonal stream descending from the Shivalik hills, as part of the city plan, and it is fed by rain rather than by a perennial river. Its catchment was later protected as the Sukhna Wildlife Sanctuary, notified in 1998, and the lake is used for rowing and other water sports.

Option A is wrong because an oxbow lake is a cut-off meander of a river, such as the Kanwar lake in Bihar, and Sukhna is not connected to the Sutlej in that way. Option C is wrong because India's known meteorite crater lake is Lonar in Maharashtra. Option D is wrong because brackish coastal lagoons are features such as Chilika in Odisha and Pulicat on the Andhra and Tamil Nadu coast, and Chandigarh is far inland. Silting from the hill catchment is the lake's standing environmental problem.

The correct answer is B, Sucheta Kriplani, who became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1963 and held office until 1967, the first woman to head the government of an Indian state. She had been a freedom fighter and a member of the Constituent Assembly before entering state politics.

Option C is the commonest wrong choice, because Sarojini Naidu also holds a first: she was the first woman Governor of an Indian province, the United Provinces, from 1947, and the first Indian woman to preside over the Congress, in 1925 — but she was never a Chief Minister. Option A is wrong on date: Nandini Satpathy became Chief Minister of Odisha in 1972, several years after Sucheta Kriplani. Option D is wrong because Vijaya Raje Scindia, though a powerful politician of Madhya Pradesh, never held the office. Keep these women's firsts as one set, since matching questions mix them freely.