Indian Organisations and Headquarters: City-wise List

Every general awareness paper carries a one-mark question of the form where is the headquarters of this body, or in which city does this laboratory work. The answer never changes, so the whole topic is pure revision. The one method that works is to learn the organisations by the city, not the city by the organisation, because a single city usually holds a cluster of related bodies: Mumbai the money, Bengaluru the space and aeronautics, Hyderabad the missiles and the crops of the drylands, Dehradun the surveys of land and forest, Kolkata the nineteenth-century surveys.

Financial regulators, banks and development institutions

The Reserve Bank of India began work on 1 April 1935 on the recommendation of the Hilton Young Commission, with its first office at Kolkata, and shifted permanently to Mumbai in 1937. Mumbai also holds the Securities and Exchange Board of India, which was set up in 1988 and given statutory powers in 1992, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development of 1982, the Export-Import Bank of India, the Life Insurance Corporation of 1956, the National Payments Corporation of India and both stock exchanges. Away from Mumbai, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India works from Hyderabad, the Small Industries Development Bank of India of 1990 from Lucknow, and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority and the National Housing Bank from New Delhi.

Space, atomic energy and defence research

ISRO was formed in 1969 and works from Bengaluru. Its centres are spread out: the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram builds launch vehicles, the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota launches them, the Space Applications Centre is at Ahmedabad, the National Remote Sensing Centre at Hyderabad, the Master Control Facility at Hassan and the U R Rao Satellite Centre at Bengaluru. The Department of Atomic Energy and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay are in Mumbai, with the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam, the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology at Indore and the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre at Kolkata. DRDO, founded in 1958, has its headquarters at New Delhi; its missile laboratories DRDL and the Research Centre Imarat are at Hyderabad, the aeronautical bodies ADA, ADE and GTRE at Bengaluru, the food laboratory DFRL at Mysuru and the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology at Pune.

Surveys, councils and research bodies

The Survey of India, founded in 1767 and the oldest scientific department of the country, works from Dehradun, which also holds the Forest Research Institute, the Wildlife Institute of India and the Indian Institute of Petroleum. Kolkata holds the three great surveys, the Geological Survey of India of 1851, the Botanical Survey of India of 1890 and the Zoological Survey of India of 1916, along with the National Library. The Archaeological Survey of India, founded in 1861, and the India Meteorological Department, founded in 1875, are at New Delhi.

• CSIR, New Delhi, 1942: NPL Delhi, NCL Pune, CDRI Lucknow, CFTRI Mysuru, NGRI Hyderabad, NEERI Nagpur, CLRI Chennai, NAL Bengaluru, NIO Goa.
• ICAR, New Delhi, 1929: IARI New Delhi, IVRI Izatnagar, NDRI Karnal, CAZRI Jodhpur, CPRI Shimla, CRRI Cuttack, CTRI Rajahmundry, IGFRI Jhansi.
• ICMR, New Delhi: National Institute of Virology Pune, National Institute of Nutrition Hyderabad, NICED Kolkata, National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis Chennai.

Public sector undertakings and defence production

Coal India works from Kolkata, while SAIL, NTPC, IOCL, GAIL and BHEL are headquartered at New Delhi. NALCO is at Bhubaneswar and the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam at Visakhapatnam. Among defence producers, Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Electronics and BEML are at Bengaluru, Bharat Dynamics and Mishra Dhatu Nigam at Hyderabad, Mazagon Dock at Mumbai, Garden Reach Shipbuilders at Kolkata, Goa Shipyard in Goa, Hindustan Shipyard at Visakhapatnam and Cochin Shipyard at Kochi.

Railway zones, the forces and the cultural bodies

The Railway Board sits at New Delhi and the Research Designs and Standards Organisation at Lucknow. Among the zones, Northern Railway is at Delhi, Southern at Chennai, Eastern at Kolkata, Western at Mumbai, Central at Mumbai, North Eastern at Gorakhpur, Northeast Frontier at Maligaon in Guwahati, South Central at Secunderabad, East Central at Hajipur, East Coast at Bhubaneswar, North Central at Prayagraj, North Western at Jaipur, South Western at Hubballi, South East Central at Bilaspur and West Central at Jabalpur. The three service headquarters are at New Delhi; the Army commands sit at Udhampur, Pune, Kolkata, Chandimandir, Lucknow and Jaipur with the training command at Shimla, and the naval commands at Mumbai, Visakhapatnam and Kochi. The Assam Rifles is headquartered at Shillong and the National Security Guard at Manesar in Gurugram. On the cultural and education side, the Sahitya, Sangeet Natak and Lalit Kala Akademis, the National School of Drama, UGC, NCERT, CBSE and AICTE are at New Delhi, the Film and Television Institute of India at Pune, the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute at Kolkata, the Central Board of Film Certification at Mumbai, the Sports Authority of India at New Delhi and the National Institute of Sports at Patiala.