Which city has the oldest metro rail system in India?

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.