Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The locations are off the coast of Goa.

Sunchi Reef, Amee Shoals and Grande Island are dive sites off the Goa coast, near Vasco da Gama and the Mormugao harbour, where old shipwrecks lie in shallow water. Goa has promoted them for shipwreck and dive tourism.

Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu and Odisha have their own wrecks and dive sites, but these three named sites are in Goan waters.

Answer: A

The state with a very high use of groundwater is Tamil Nadu.

In the national groundwater resource assessments, Tamil Nadu's stage of groundwater extraction, the share of annual extractable groundwater actually drawn, is well above the national average of about 60%, at roughly three-quarters, placing it among the most heavily exploited states with Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Odisha draw a much smaller share of their groundwater, so they are wrong.

Answer: B

Barren Island is in the Andaman Islands.

Barren Island, India's only confirmed active volcano, lies in the Andaman Sea about 140 km north-east of Port Blair and belongs to the Andaman group of islands.

The Nicobar Islands lie further south, and Lakshadweep (which includes Minicoy) is a group of coral islands in the Arabian Sea with no volcano.

Barren Island has erupted repeatedly since 1991; Narcondam, also in the Andaman Sea, is a volcano generally regarded as dormant.

Answer: C

The snow leopard is the state animal of Himachal Pradesh.

Himachal Pradesh adopted the snow leopard, which lives in its high Trans-Himalayan districts such as Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur, as its state animal. The Union Territory of Ladakh has also adopted it, but Ladakh is not among the options.

Arunachal Pradesh's state animal is the mithun (gayal), Uttarakhand's is the Himalayan musk deer, and Jammu and Kashmir's is the hangul (Kashmir stag).

Answer: B

Mountains account for about 30% of India's land area.

The standard breakdown of India's relief, given in school geography, is: plains about 43% of the land area, mountains about 30%, and plateaus about 27%. The mountains include the Himalaya and the hill ranges of the north-east, as well as older ranges such as the Aravalli and the Western and Eastern Ghats.

25% understates the share, and 35% and 40% overstate it; the plains, not the mountains, are the largest of the three.

Answer: C

Crude oil is produced in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

Gujarat has major onshore fields around Ankleshwar, Kalol and Mehsana in the Cambay basin, and Tamil Nadu produces oil from the Cauvery basin. The other big producers are Bombay High, offshore of Mumbai, and Assam, home of Digboi, the oldest oilfield in the country.

Each other option pairs a producer with a non-producer: West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar have refineries or industry but no significant crude production, so 'Bombay High and West Bengal', 'Assam and Odisha' and 'Bihar and Bombay High' are all wrong.

Answer: B

The literacy rate of Nagaland in Census 2011 was about 79.5 per cent (79.55 per cent), which matches the second option. This is above the all-India literacy rate of 74.04 per cent recorded in the same census. The other options, 78, 80.5 and 82.5 per cent, are further from the census value. The answer follows the official key and the Census 2011 figure.

Answer: D

The incorrect pair is Bhakra Nangal Dam with the Beas. The Bhakra Nangal Dam is built on the Sutlej river, not the Beas; the dam on the Beas is the Pong Dam (and Pandoh Dam). The other pairs are correct: the Maithon Dam is on the Barakar river in the Damodar Valley Corporation system, the Mettur Dam is on the Kaveri in Tamil Nadu, and the Tehri Dam is on the Bhagirathi in Uttarakhand. Since the question asks for the incorrect pair, the fourth option is the answer.

Answer: C

82°30' East longitude is the Standard Meridian of India. It passes through Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh, and Indian Standard Time is calculated on its basis. A longitude is east or west of Greenwich, never north or south, so 82°30' North and South are wrong, and India lies in the eastern hemisphere, so West is also wrong.

Answer: B

The first census of independent India was conducted in 1951. The 1948 and 1950 dates are not census years, because censuses are held every ten years from 1951, and 1947 is the year of independence. The 1951 census was the ninth in the series that began in 1872, and the first after independence.