Sikkim became a full state of the Indian Union by which constitutional amendment?

The correct answer is B, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The States Department was set up in early July 1947, weeks before independence, and Patel took charge of it as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, with V. P. Menon as its Secretary. In little more than a year the department secured the accession of around 565 states and then merged most of them into provinces or unions of states. Option A is wrong: Nehru as Prime Minister handled foreign affairs and dealt personally with Kashmir, but the department was not his. Option C is wrong: C. Rajagopalachari became Governor-General in 1948 and later Chief Minister of Madras, and had no charge of the states question. Option D is wrong: Maulana Azad was Education Minister in the first cabinet. The work earned Patel the titles Iron Man of India and Bismarck of India, and his birth anniversary on 31 October is observed as National Unity Day.

The correct answer is A, defence, external affairs and communications. The Instrument of Accession was kept deliberately narrow so that a ruler could sign it without feeling that he had surrendered his state, and all other powers stayed with him for the time being. Option B is wrong: taxation and police remained with the states at the stage of accession, and were brought under common administration only through the later merger agreements. Option C names the matters covered not by the Instrument but by the Standstill Agreement, which continued existing arrangements on customs, currency, posts and railways until new ones were settled. Option D lists subjects that were never part of the document; they were and remain largely provincial or state subjects. The point to remember is the two-step process: a narrow accession in 1947, and the real integration into provinces, unions of states and centrally administered areas in 1948 and 1949.

The correct answer is B, V. P. Menon. As Secretary of the States Department he drafted the Instrument of Accession and the Standstill Agreement, travelled from court to court to collect signatures, and wrote the standard first-hand account of the episode, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States. Option A, H. M. Patel, was a senior civil servant who worked on the partition arrangements and later became a finance minister, but not on the states. Option C, K. M. Munshi, was a member of the Constituent Assembly and of its Drafting Committee, and was the agent-general in Hyderabad during the crisis, a related but different role. Option D, B. N. Rau, was the Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly, who prepared the first draft of the Constitution. Pairing Patel as the political head with Menon as the official head is the form in which this question is usually set.

The correct answer is B, Operation Polo. The Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, had signed a Standstill Agreement in November 1947 and then delayed accession while the Razakar militia under Kasim Razvi attacked villagers. The Government of India launched the police action from 13 to 18 September 1948, after which the Nizam acceded and became Rajpramukh of the state. Option A, Operation Vijay, was the action of December 1961 that ended Portuguese rule in Goa, Daman and Diu, and the name was used again in 1999 for the Kargil operations. Option C, Operation Meghdoot, was the 1984 operation on the Siachen glacier. Option D, Operation Cactus, was the Indian intervention in the Maldives in 1988. Examiners very often offer Operation Polo and Operation Vijay together, so fix the pairing of Polo with Hyderabad in 1948 and Vijay with Goa in 1961.

The correct answer is B, 26 October 1947. The Maharaja had hoped to stay out of both dominions and had signed a standstill arrangement, but when tribal raiders supported from across the border entered the valley and advanced towards Srinagar in late October 1947 he asked India for military help. India made accession the condition, the Instrument was signed on 26 October, and troops were airlifted to Srinagar the next day. Option A is wrong because no accession was signed on the day of independence; that is the date on which paramountcy lapsed. Option C, 26 January 1948, is close to the date the Constitution came into force two years later and has nothing to do with Kashmir. Option D, 17 September 1948, falls inside the Hyderabad police action, and is remembered in Telangana in connection with that event, not with Kashmir. The accession was later reflected in Article 370.