Who was the first Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh?

The correct answer is D, Akbar. He built Fatehpur Sikri in the Agra district of present day Uttar Pradesh in the sixteenth century and made it his capital, naming it after his victory in Gujarat. The city holds the Buland Darwaza, the Jama Masjid, the Panch Mahal and the tomb of Salim Chishti, and it was abandoned after a few years, which is why it survives so completely. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Option A, Babur, founded the dynasty after the first battle of Panipat in 1526 and ruled from Agra, not from Sikri. Option B, Humayun, lost the empire to Sher Shah Suri and regained it shortly before his death, and built nothing of this kind. Option C, Jahangir, was Akbar's son and was born at Sikri, which is the reason the place is often wrongly credited to him; he ruled from Agra and Lahore.

The correct answer is A, Ayodhya. The city stands on the Sarayu in eastern Uttar Pradesh and is one of the oldest towns named in Indian literature. The Sarayu is fed by waters coming down from the Himalaya through the Ghaghara system and joins the Ganga further east, and the ghats of Ayodhya lie along it.

Option C, Kanpur, is also in Uttar Pradesh but stands on the Ganga, which makes it the closest wrong answer in the list. Option D, Haridwar, is in Uttarakhand and is the town where the Ganga leaves the hills for the plain. Option B, Bhopal, is the capital of Madhya Pradesh and is known for its lakes rather than for a river. The pairs worth holding are Varanasi and Prayagraj on the Ganga, Agra and Mathura on the Yamuna, Lucknow on the Gomti and Ayodhya on the Sarayu.

The correct answer is B, 1950. The province was called the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and then simply the United Provinces, and the name was changed to Uttar Pradesh on 24 January 1950, two days before the Constitution came into force. The new name was welcomed partly because it kept the initials of the old one, so that existing seals and records did not have to be redone.

Option A, 1947, is the year of independence, when the province still carried its old name. Option C, 1956, is the year of the States Reorganisation Act, which redrew many boundaries but did not rename this state. Option D, 2000, is the year the hill districts of the state were separated to form Uttarakhand, then called Uttaranchal, which is a division rather than a renaming.

The correct answer is A, Dudhwa National Park. It lies in Lakhimpur Kheri district along the border with Nepal and protects the tall grassland and sal forest of the Terai. It is the home of the barasingha, the swamp deer that is the state animal of Uttar Pradesh, and also of tigers and rhinoceros. Nearby Pilibhit is a well known tiger reserve of the same belt.

Option B, Jim Corbett, is the trap most often chosen, because it was the first national park of India and lay in Uttar Pradesh before the year 2000; it went to Uttarakhand when that state was formed. Options C and D, Kanha and Bandhavgarh, are both in Madhya Pradesh and are famous tiger parks of the central Indian highlands, far from the Terai.

The correct answer is B, sarus crane. It is the tallest flying bird in the world, stands over a metre and a half high, has a grey body with a bare red head and neck, and is found in the wetlands and flooded fields of the state. The pair stays together for life, which is why it appears so often in the folklore of the region, and it was chosen as the state bird of Uttar Pradesh.

Option D, the Indian peafowl, is the national bird of India and so is the easiest mistake to make here. Option C, the great Indian bustard, is the state bird of Rajasthan and is now extremely rare. Option A, the Indian roller, is the state bird of some other states and is a smaller blue bird of open country. Along with the sarus crane, remember the barasingha as the state animal, the ashoka as the state tree and the palash as the state flower.