Which of the following is the only marine turtle sanctuary of India, famous as the nesting ground of the olive ridley turtle?

The correct answer is D, Karnataka. The Bankapura Peacock Sanctuary lies within the ruins of Bankapura fort in Haveri district of Karnataka and is one of the very few protected areas in India notified specifically for the Indian peafowl, the national bird. Option A is wrong because Rajasthan, though rich in peafowl, is remembered in this chapter for Keoladeo National Park at Bharatpur and for the Desert National Park, not for a peacock sanctuary. Option B is wrong because Maharashtra's names in this chapter are the Malvan Marine Sanctuary and the mangrove areas of the Konkan coast. Option C is wrong because Madhya Pradesh is associated with tiger reserves such as Kanha and Bandhavgarh and with the National Chambal Sanctuary rather than with a peacock sanctuary.

The correct answer is A, Rajasthan. Keoladeo National Park stands at Bharatpur in eastern Rajasthan and is unusual in being a man-made wetland, created by a ruler of Bharatpur as a duck shooting reserve and later turned into a sanctuary and then a national park. It is both a Ramsar site and a World Heritage Site, and it was famous as the wintering ground of the Siberian crane. Option B is wrong because Gujarat's best known bird wetland is Nal Sarovar, with Thol and Khijadia beside it. Option C is wrong because Haryana's wetland of this kind is Sultanpur National Park near Gurugram. Option D is wrong because Uttar Pradesh is associated with the sarus crane, its state bird, and with wetlands such as Upper Ganga rather than with Keoladeo.

The correct answer is B, Marine National Park, Gulf of Kachchh. Declared in Gujarat in 1980, it was the first area in India to be notified as a marine national park, and it covers a chain of islands carrying coral reefs and mangrove along the Gulf of Kachchh. Option A is wrong because the Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park at Wandoor in South Andaman was notified in 1983, after the Gujarat park. Option C is wrong because the Gulf of Mannar holds a different distinction: it was declared India's first marine biosphere reserve in 1989, and the two superlatives are the pair examiners most often swap. Option D is wrong because the Sundarbans, though a mangrove area on the coast, was notified as a national park for the tiger and is not classed as a marine national park.

The correct answer is C, Odisha. Chilika is a brackish water lagoon on the Odisha coast, the largest of its kind in Asia, separated from the Bay of Bengal by a long sand bar. The island of Nalaban within it is notified as a bird sanctuary, and Chilika was among the first Indian wetlands to be designated a Ramsar site; it is also known for the Irrawaddy dolphin. Option A is wrong because West Bengal's great coastal wetland is the Sundarbans. Option B is wrong because Andhra Pradesh has Pulicat and Kolleru, and Pulicat, the second largest brackish lagoon of India, is shared with Tamil Nadu. Option D is wrong because Tamil Nadu's names here are Point Calimere and Vedanthangal. A useful pairing is that Chilika is the largest brackish water lagoon of Asia while Pulicat, shared between Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, is the second largest in India.

The correct answer is B, Pitti. Pitti is a tiny uninhabited coral islet in Lakshadweep, notified as the Pitti Bird Sanctuary, and is the breeding ground of sooty terns and other sea birds; it is the only wildlife sanctuary of the territory. Option A is wrong because Nalaban is the island sanctuary inside Chilika Lake in Odisha. Option C is wrong because Nal Sarovar is a shallow freshwater lake in Gujarat, a Ramsar site known for flamingos and pelicans. Option D is wrong because Deepor Beel is a Ramsar site and bird sanctuary on the edge of Guwahati in Assam, fed by the Brahmaputra. All three distractors are genuine bird areas, which is what makes the question a test of location rather than of names.