Airports, Ports and Metro Cities of India: Static GK

The correct answer is B, Kolkata. The first stretch of the Kolkata Metro, between Esplanade and Bhowanipore, was opened on 24 October 1984, almost two decades before any other Indian city had a metro. The system is also unusual because it is operated as a zone of Indian Railways rather than by a separate metro corporation. Option A is wrong because the Delhi Metro, though it grew into the largest network in the country, opened its first section from Shahdara to Tis Hazari only on 24 December 2002. Option C is wrong because the Mumbai Metro began commercial service in 2014. Option D is wrong because the Chennai Metro is later still. The order to remember for the earliest systems is Kolkata in 1984, Delhi in 2002 and Bengaluru in 2011.

The correct answer is B, Maharashtra. The Jawaharlal Nehru Port lies at Nhava Sheva across the harbour from Mumbai, in the Navi Mumbai area, and it handles the largest volume of container traffic of any port in India. It was developed to relieve the congestion at the older Mumbai Port. Option A is wrong because Gujarat holds the Deendayal Port at Kandla, a tidal port that was the first developed after independence, and the private Mundra Port, but not Nhava Sheva. Option C is wrong because Goa's major port is Mormugao, long associated with iron ore exports. Option D is wrong because Karnataka's major port is New Mangalore. A useful pairing to memorise is Nhava Sheva for containers, Kandla for tidal cargo and Mormugao for iron ore.

The correct answer is B, the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port at Kolkata. It sits far up the Hooghly river rather than on the open sea, which makes it the only riverine major port in the country, and it is the oldest of the major ports still working; the Haldia dock complex downstream was added to handle larger vessels that cannot reach Kolkata. Option A is wrong because Paradip in Odisha is a natural harbour on the open coast. Option C is wrong because Visakhapatnam, though famous as the deepest landlocked port with both an inner and an outer harbour, is a coastal port and not a river port. Option D is wrong because Chennai is an artificial harbour built out into the sea. The dredging of silt from the Hooghly is the recurring problem that makes Kolkata distinctive.

The correct answer is A, it was the first airport in the world to be fully powered by solar energy. Cochin International Airport commissioned a solar plant large enough to meet its own consumption, and for that it received the Champion of the Earth award of the United Nations Environment Programme in 2018. It was also the first airport in India built under a public private partnership. Option B is wrong because the busiest airport in India by passenger traffic is Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. Option C is wrong because the Airports Authority of India was formed only in 1995, by merging two earlier authorities, and Cochin was built outside that model as a company. Option D is wrong because no Indian airport holds the record for the longest runway in Asia. Fix the pair Kochi and solar power.

The correct answer is C, Bengaluru. The airport is named after Kempegowda, the sixteenth century chieftain regarded as the founder of the city. Option A is wrong because Hyderabad is served by the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport at Shamshabad, which replaced the older Begumpet airport. Option B is wrong because Chennai is served by the Chennai International Airport at Meenambakkam. Option D is wrong because Pune has its own airport at Lohegaon and is not connected with the Kempegowda name. Airport naming is a steady source of matching questions, so group the big ones together: Indira Gandhi for Delhi, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj for Mumbai, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for Kolkata, Kempegowda for Bengaluru, Rajiv Gandhi for Hyderabad and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel for Ahmedabad. Guwahati, the gateway to the North East, carries the name of Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi, and Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is named after Veer Savarkar.

The correct answer is B, Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik. The scheme was announced under the National Civil Aviation Policy of 2016 so that unserved and underserved airstrips could be linked to the main network at capped fares, with the gap met through a viability gap funding mechanism. Its first flight connected Shimla with Delhi in April 2017. Option A is wrong because air navigation services are provided by the Airports Authority of India and have no scheme of this name. Option C is wrong because the scheme is aimed at small towns and regional airstrips rather than at urban airport networks. Option D is wrong because it simply rearranges the words into an expansion that was never used. Remember the scheme, the policy year 2016 and the first route Shimla to Delhi together.

The correct answer is A, Visakhapatnam. The port in Andhra Pradesh lies in a natural inlet sheltered by the Dolphin's Nose headland, which gives it great depth while keeping it protected, and it is the one Indian major port that works with a separate inner harbour and outer harbour. Option B is wrong because Paradip in Odisha is an open coast natural harbour without that two part layout. Option C is wrong because the V. O. Chidambaranar Port at Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu is an artificial deep sea harbour created by building breakwaters, not a landlocked one. Option D is wrong because New Mangalore in Karnataka is an all weather port handling iron ore and petroleum but is not known for exceptional depth. Keep the descriptive labels apart: Visakhapatnam deepest, Kandla tidal, Kolkata riverine.

The correct answer is C, 1995. The Airports Authority of India came into being in that year through the merger of the International Airports Authority of India, which ran the international gateways, with the National Airports Authority, which ran the domestic airfields and the air navigation services. The merged statutory body manages most civil airports in the country and provides air traffic services over Indian airspace. Option A is wrong because 1972 is the year the International Airports Authority alone was set up. Option B is wrong because 1986 is when the National Airports Authority was constituted, the second of the two bodies that later merged. Option D is wrong because 2004 has no bearing on the Authority's formation. The chain to remember is 1972, then 1986, then the merger in 1995.

The correct answer is B, Sagarmala. The programme covers port modernisation and new port development, port connectivity, port linked industrialisation and coastal community development, and it is run by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways. Option A is wrong because Bharatmala is the umbrella highway development programme of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, covering economic corridors and border roads. Option C is wrong because Setu Bharatam is the scheme to replace level crossings on national highways with bridges and to repair old bridges. Option D is wrong because Jal Marg Vikas is the specific project to develop the National Waterway 1 on the Ganga between Varanasi and Haldia, which is narrower in scope than Sagarmala. Pair each name with its ministry to avoid the mix up.

The correct answer is B, Kandla. After partition left the port of Karachi outside India, Kandla in the Gulf of Kutch was developed as the main gateway for the northern and western hinterland, which makes it the first major port developed after independence. It is a tidal port, meaning ships work with the rise and fall of the tide in the gulf, and it was renamed the Deendayal Port in 2017. Option A is wrong because Mundra, also in Gujarat, is the largest privately operated port in India and is not a major port in the statutory sense. Option C is wrong because Porbandar is a smaller state port better known as the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. Option D is wrong because Okha is a minor port on the Gujarat coast. Note the three Gujarat names separately.