The Airports Authority of India was constituted in which year by merging two earlier authorities?

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.