In which year did Motilal Nehru (Chairman) and eight other Congress leaders draft a constitution for India?

The correct answer is D, none of the above. The princely states were not a small fringe of the map. Standard accounts place their share at roughly two-fifths of the land area of the subcontinent, and some put it close to a half, with around a quarter of the population; about 565 states of every size, from Hyderabad and Kashmir down to estates of a few villages, lay between and around the British provinces. Option A, one-third, is the figure students most often guess and it understates the true extent. Option B, one-fourth, is nearer to the share of population than of area, which is where the confusion comes from. Option C, one-tenth, is far too small and would describe only a handful of the larger states. Because every fraction offered falls short of the accepted range, the paper marks the fourth option as correct. The lesson is to carry one bearing in memory: more than a third, nearer two-fifths.

The correct answer is B, the 36th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1975. It made Sikkim the twenty-second state of the Union after a referendum in which its people voted to end the rule of the Chogyal and to join India. Option A, the 35th Amendment of 1974, is the near miss the examiner relies on: it gave Sikkim the intermediate status of an associate state of the Union, a status that existed only for that one year. Option C, the 42nd Amendment of 1976, is the sweeping amendment of the Emergency years that added the words socialist, secular and integrity to the Preamble and created the Fundamental Duties. Option D, the 44th Amendment of 1978, reversed many of those changes and replaced internal disturbance with armed rebellion as a ground for a national emergency. Sikkim had been an Indian protectorate since 1950.

The correct answer is B, Part B states. These were the former princely units and unions of states, among them Hyderabad, Mysore, Rajasthan, Saurashtra, Madhya Bharat, Travancore-Cochin, PEPSU and Jammu and Kashmir, and each was headed by a Rajpramukh rather than by a Governor. Option A, Part A states, were the former governors' provinces of British India, such as Bombay, Madras, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, each with a Governor and an elected legislature. Option C, Part C states, were the former chief commissioners' provinces and some smaller princely areas, including Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Vindhya Pradesh, Ajmer, Coorg, Manipur and Tripura, administered by a Chief Commissioner or Lieutenant Governor. Option D, Part D, held only the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The whole scheme was abolished by the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, which replaced it with states and union territories.

The correct answer is B, the Patiala and East Punjab States Union. It was formed in 1948 by grouping Patiala with Kapurthala, Jind, Nabha, Faridkot, Malerkotla, Nalagarh and Kalsia, with the Maharaja of Patiala as Rajpramukh, and it became a Part B state under the Constitution of 1950. PEPSU was merged into Punjab in 1956 when the States Reorganisation Act ended the four-part classification. Options A, C and D are plausible-looking expansions built from the same words, and that is exactly how the question is set; each of them misstates either the first element, which is the state of Patiala, or the second, which is East Punjab. Remember PEPSU alongside the other unions of states created in the same years, Saurashtra from the Kathiawar states, Rajasthan from the Rajputana states, Madhya Bharat from the central Indian states and Travancore-Cochin in the south.

The correct answer is A, a plebiscite held in February 1948. The Nawab of Junagadh, Mahabat Khan III, announced accession to Pakistan in September 1947 although his small state in Kathiawar was surrounded by Indian territory and had a largely Hindu population. Popular resistance followed, the Nawab left for Karachi, and after the administration was taken over a plebiscite was held in February 1948 in which the vote for India was overwhelming. Option B describes Hyderabad, where Operation Polo ran from 13 to 18 September 1948. Option C is wrong because the Radcliffe Boundary Commission drew the line between India and Pakistan in Punjab and Bengal and had no role in the princely states. Option D is wrong: the referendum of the 1950s that students sometimes recall is the vote in the Chandernagore settlement, and 1956 is the year of the States Reorganisation Act, not of any vote in Junagadh.