Chandigarh GK: Capitol Complex, Sectors and Static Facts

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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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, Le Corbusier. The Open Hand, a large metal sculpture mounted so that it turns with the wind, stands in the Capitol Complex and was conceived by the architect as a sign of a hand open to give and open to receive, that is, open to new ideas. It became the official emblem of the Union Territory, and it appears with the Tower of Shadows and the Geometric Hill among his symbolic works in Sector 1.

Option A, Nek Chand Saini, created the Rock Garden from waste material, an entirely separate achievement, and the two are the pair most often swapped in exams. Option C, Pierre Jeanneret, designed many buildings and the well-known Chandigarh furniture but not this monument. Option D, Maxwell Fry, was one of the English architects on the team responsible for housing and educational buildings. Fix the pair in memory: Open Hand belongs to Le Corbusier, Rock Garden to Nek Chand.

The correct answer is B, one Lok Sabha seat and no Rajya Sabha seat. The territory returns a single member to the Lok Sabha from the Chandigarh constituency. It has no seat in the Rajya Sabha, because among the Union Territories only those with a legislature, namely Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir, are represented in the Council of States, and Chandigarh has no legislative assembly.

Option A is therefore wrong, and it is the commonest error, made by candidates who assume every territory has a seat in both Houses. Option C is wrong on both counts because the territory is small and has only one constituency. Option D is wrong because Union Territories are represented in the Lok Sabha; Article 81 provides for representation of the territories, and the administration itself runs under Article 239 through an Administrator, by convention the Governor of Punjab.

The correct answer is C, about 86 per cent. The 2011 Census recorded a literacy rate of 86.05 per cent for Chandigarh, well above the national figure of about 73 per cent, which is to be expected of a territory that is almost entirely urban and has a large service and education sector. The same census put its population a little over ten and a half lakh, its sex ratio at 818 females per thousand males and its density at about 9,258 persons per square kilometre.

Option A, about 66 per cent, is far too low and is closer to the figures of the least literate states in that census. Option B, about 76 per cent, is near the national urban average rather than Chandigarh's own. Option D, about 96 per cent, overstates it; the highest state literacy in 2011 was Kerala at about 94 per cent, which no territory exceeded. Always attach the census year to such numbers, since they are revised only when a fresh census is taken.