Goa GK: Liberation, Statehood, Geography and Facts

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, 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 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, Mollem National Park. It is the single national park of Goa and lies within the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary on the border with Karnataka, in the belt of the Western Ghats where the Dudhsagar Falls also stand. Options A, C and D name real protected areas of Goa, but all three are wildlife sanctuaries and not national parks: Bondla is the small sanctuary near Ponda with a well known zoo and botanical garden, Cotigao lies in the far south near Canacona, and Netravali is in the Sanguem taluka, famous for its bubbling springs. The state's other protected area is the Dr Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary on Chorao island in the Mandovi. Examiners test the difference between a national park and a sanctuary, so fix Mollem as the only park.

The correct answer is A, the Mandovi. The Dudhsagar Falls, a drop of roughly 310 metres in four tiers, are on the Mandovi river in the Western Ghats near the Goa and Karnataka border, inside the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary; the name means sea of milk, from the white sheet the water makes in the monsoon. Option B, the Zuari, is wrong although it is the largest river of the state and carries Mormugao port at its mouth. Option C, the Sal, is wrong; it is a small river of South Goa with no such fall. Option D, the Chapora, is wrong; it is a northern river with a Portuguese fort at its mouth. Note that the same river, the Mandovi, carries the capital Panaji, which makes it the single most examinable river of Goa.

The correct answer is C, the Seventy-first Amendment Act, passed in 1992, which added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali to the Eighth Schedule, taking the number of scheduled languages from fifteen to eighteen. Option A is wrong but closely related: the Fifty-sixth Amendment Act of 1987 inserted Article 371-I, the special provision for Goa, in the year Goa became a state. Option B is wrong; the Sixty-first Amendment Act of 1988 lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen years. Option D is wrong, and it is the other trap: the Ninety-second Amendment Act of 2003 added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali to the Eighth Schedule, the next set of languages after Konkani's group. Konkani in the Devanagari script is also the official language of Goa under the Official Language Act of 1987.

The correct answer is B, St Francis Xavier. The Basilica of Bom Jesus, built at the end of the sixteenth century, holds the body of St Francis Xavier in a silver casket, and the relics are brought out for public veneration at an exposition held about once in ten years; his feast falls on 3 December. Option A is wrong; St Thomas the Apostle is associated with the Malabar coast and with the Santhome basilica at Chennai. Option C is wrong but is the standing trap, because the Se Cathedral at Old Goa, one of the largest churches in Asia, is the church dedicated to St Catherine. Option D is wrong; the Church of St Francis of Assisi stands beside the Se Cathedral at Old Goa but holds no such relics. All of them belong to the Churches and Convents of Goa, on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1986.

The correct answer is C, Afonso de Albuquerque. In 1510 Albuquerque took Goa from the Adil Shahi rulers of Bijapur, and the city became the seat of Portuguese power in the East, the capital of the Estado da India, which it remained until 1961. Option A is wrong; Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498 and was the first European to sail to India by the Cape route, but he did not take Goa, though the Goan town of Vasco da Gama carries his name. Option B is wrong; Francisco de Almeida was the first Portuguese viceroy in India, from 1505, and Albuquerque succeeded him. Option D is wrong; Pedro Alvares Cabral led a voyage to Calicut in 1500 and is remembered for reaching Brazil. Portuguese rule in Goa lasted about four and a half centuries, longer than any other European hold in India.

The correct answer is B, 40. Goa has a single house, the Legislative Assembly, of forty seats, which is the floor the Constitution allows for a state assembly through the special provision made for Goa; the state also sends two members to the Lok Sabha, from North Goa and South Goa, and one to the Rajya Sabha. Option A, 30, is wrong; thirty is the size of the assembly in Sikkim and in Mizoram, so it is an easy confusion with another small state. Option C, 60, is wrong; sixty is the strength of the assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland. Option D, 70, is wrong; seventy belongs to Himachal Pradesh and to the Delhi assembly. The ordinary minimum for a state assembly is sixty, and Goa is the exception to it.

The correct answer is C, the Zuari. Mormugao harbour, a natural harbour on the Goan coast, stands at the mouth of the Zuari, the largest river of the state, with the town of Vasco da Gama beside it; the port was developed for the export of iron ore brought down by barge. Option A, the Mandovi, is wrong, though ore barges used it too and the capital Panaji stands on it. Option B, the Terekhol, is wrong; that small river marks the northern boundary with Maharashtra and carries only a fort at its mouth. Option D, the Talpona, is wrong; it is a short river in the far south of Goa near Canacona. Mormugao is the port to remember for Goa, as Kandla is for Gujarat and Paradip for Odisha.

The correct answer is D, Goa. Goa covers about 3,702 square kilometres, less than any other state of the Union; in population too it is among the smallest, ahead only of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim at the census of 2011. Option A is wrong but is the usual trap: Sikkim, at about 7,096 square kilometres, is the second smallest state by area and the smallest by population. Option B is wrong; Tripura covers about 10,486 square kilometres. Option C is wrong; Nagaland covers about 16,579 square kilometres. Note the difference between a state and a union territory: Lakshadweep is the smallest union territory by area and Delhi and Puducherry are also smaller than Goa, but the question asks for the smallest state. Goa also became a state later than any of these three, on 30 May 1987, which is why it is called the newest of the older states.

The correct answer is B, Chorao. The Dr Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary lies on Chorao island in the Mandovi river near Panaji and is a stretch of mangrove forest and mudflat known for its herons, egrets, kingfishers and migratory waterbirds; it is named after the ornithologist Salim Ali, the author of the standard handbooks on Indian birds. Option A, Divar, is wrong; it is a neighbouring island in the Mandovi known for the Bonderam flag festival. Option C, Vanxim, is wrong; it is a small island of the same estuary with no sanctuary on it. Option D, Anjediva, is wrong; it is a small island off the Karwar coast to the south. Fix the pair, Mollem for the only national park and Chorao for the bird sanctuary. Salim Ali was awarded the Bharat Ratna, and several sanctuaries across India carry his name, so read the state in the stem before answering.