Practice: Rajasthan: Location, Extent and Physiography

(b) 23°3′ N to 30°12′ N, with the longitude 69°29′ E to 78°17′ E.

Why not the others: (a) 23°30′ is what the office of the Resident Commissioner prints, and it cannot be right — see Q2. (c) is the India State of Forest Report 2023's pair, differing by one minute of arc at each end of the latitude, which is below the precision any question can turn on. (d) is printed nowhere. Three official bodies, three sets of coordinates, and only one of them is actually impossible.

(d). A southern limit of 23°30′ N would place the whole state north of the Tropic, and the Tropic's passage through Banswara and Dungarpur is stated by the state's own material and is not in dispute. The state cannot both begin at 23°30′ and be crossed at 23°26′.

Why not the others: (a) is an appeal to authority, and the question asks for a test that needs none — though the Forest Survey's figure does agree. (b) and (c) are true statements that decide nothing here. This is the model for handling conflicting official sources: find the fact that makes one of them impossible.

(c) Banswara and Dungarpur, in the south of the state. That is why the far south is the only part of Rajasthan tropical in the strict sense, and why Banswara's climate reads differently from Bikaner's.

Why not the others: The commonest error is not naming the wrong districts but placing the Tropic across the middle of the state. It does not cross the middle; it clips the southern edge. (a) Sirohi and Udaipur are southern but lie north of it, and Sirohi is the Guru Shikhar district, which is what makes it tempting.

(b) 342,239 sq km and 10.4%. Rajasthan is the largest state in India by area.

Why not the others: The square kilometres are identical in all three official versions; only the rounding differs — 10.4% from the Environment Department, 10.41% in the state textbooks, 11% from the Resident Commissioner's office. (c) is not a wrong number so much as a wrong choice of number: the departmental figure is the one to write, and the rounding to 11% is the one to avoid. (d) 7.9% belongs to nothing.

(d) 826 km north–south and 869 km east–west. The state is wider than it is tall, by 43 km.

Why not the others: (a) is the swap, and it is the answer most people give, because the intuition from the map's shape runs the other way. It is a small fact and it is set. (c) 1,070 km is the length of the Pakistan border, not a dimension of the state.

(a). The Forest Survey of India's figures differ from the textbooks' by one minute of arc at each end of the latitude — 23°4′ against 23°3′, 30°11′ against 30°12′ — and agree with them on the longitude.

Why not the others: (b) is the textbook pair and (c) the Resident Commissioner's. The useful point is what the Forest Survey settles: it agrees with the Resident Commissioner on the northern limit and on the longitude, and refutes that office's southern limit of 23°30′. A scientific body of the Government of India has effectively adjudicated between two Rajasthan sources.

(c) Sri Ganganagar, Bikaner, Jaisalmer and Barmer. Learn them as a north-to-south run, because that is the order they occur in and the order an option will scramble.

Why not the others: (a) is the live trap: Anupgarh was one of the nine districts abolished on 28 December 2024, and any list naming it is keyed to a map that no longer exists. (b) Hanumangarh is a Ghaggar Plain district, not a border district; (d) Jalore does not reach the frontier. Check the date on a district-wise border list before you learn it.

(b) 1,070 km, and this is the one border length stated by the Government of Rajasthan itself.

Why not the others: Every wrong option is a real length from the same table — (a) 1,022 km is Gujarat's, (c) 1,262 km Haryana's, (d) 1,600 km Madhya Pradesh's — and all three are figures in general circulation for which no state government source was found. A question of this shape is really asking whether you can tell the sourced number from the circulating ones.

(d) The 1,070 km international boundary.

Why not the others: The individual inter-state lengths, their 4,850 km total and the naming of the Pakistan stretch as the Radcliffe Line are all in general circulation, with no state government source located for any of them. They are not thereby false, and the set is at least internally consistent — 1,600 + 1,262 + 1,022 + 877 + 89 = 4,850. Not every version of that table in circulation adds up, and one that does not should be discarded.

(b) Madhya Pradesh 1,600 km against Punjab 89 km, and the gap is the memorable part: the longest is roughly eighteen times the shortest.

Why not the others: (d) Haryana at 1,262 km is second, not first — the option that catches anyone who remembers a big number without ranking it. (c) Gujarat at 1,022 km is fourth of five. Carry all of these as what the circulating set says, with the caveat attached, since no state government source states them. Uttar Pradesh, at 877 km, sits between Gujarat and Punjab.

(c) Five states, with Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to the south-west. The rest: Punjab and Haryana north and north-east, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh east.

Why not the others: Madhya Pradesh appears twice in the compass description — east and south-west — which is exactly what tempts a count of six. It is one state on two sides, and that wrap is why it also holds the longest inter-state border. (a) Maharashtra does not touch Rajasthan at all.

(a). Neem Ka Thana and Sanchore were both abolished on 28 December 2024, so a list naming either is keyed to a window of about eighteen months that has since closed.

Why not the others: (b) is the plausible wrong answer, and it fails on direction. These lists are too new to be the textbooks' and too old to be current — they are not stale in the old way, which is what makes them convincing. (c) The 1,070 km figure is not what such lists get wrong.

(a) 7 divisions and 41 districts, following the state cabinet's decision of 28 December 2024.

Why not the others: (b) 33 districts is what the standard textbooks still print, and it is superseded. (c) 10 divisions and 50 districts was the position between the creation of the new units and December 2024, when three additional divisions existed. The division count is the same before and after the reorganisation, and the district count is not — which is why the surrounding text in an old book looks perfectly correct while the district figure is wrong.

(c) 28 December 2024, by decision of the state cabinet.

Why not the others: Each wrong option is a real date from this chapter, and each belongs to something else. (a) 24 December 2025 is the Ministry of Environment's direction banning new mining leases across the Aravallis; (b) 9 January 2006 is the date from which the "100 metres above local relief" criterion has been in force in Rajasthan; (d) 1 April 2026 is the start of Phase I of Census 2027. Four December-ish dates within twenty years, and only one of them redraws districts.

(d) Dholpur, a long-standing district and unaffected by the reorganisation.

Why not the others: The nine abolished were Anupgarh, Dudu, Gangapur City, Jaipur Rural, Jodhpur Rural, Kekri, Neem Ka Thana, Sanchore and Shahpura. A district that existed for about eighteen months and was then abolished is precisely what an examiner sets, in either direction — as a district that no longer exists, or as one that once did. Dholpur has its own trap elsewhere: it answers "smallest district" only on the older map.

(b) Pali, Banswara and Sikar — all three of them recent creations, which is why dissolving them returned the state to its long-standing seven.

Why not the others: (a) and (d) name divisions that still exist. (c) substitutes Shahpura, which was abolished as a district, not as a division — the neatest way to test whether you have kept the two lists apart. Nine districts and three divisions went on the same day, and they are different lists.

(c) 33 districts and 241 tehsils — the Rajasthan Adhyayan figures, carried on the chapter page only as superseded.

Why not the others: The pairing is what matters: an answer that updates the district count but keeps the textbook's tehsil count, as (a) does, is the commonest half-corrected error. (b) 50 districts belongs to the 2023-to-2024 configuration, not to any textbook.

(a) Ajmer, Bharatpur, Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota and Udaipur.

Why not the others: Each wrong option swaps in one of the three dissolved divisions — (b) Pali, (c) Banswara, (d) Sikar. The count stays at seven in every option, which is the point: getting the number right proves nothing about whether you know the list.

(b) About 51% — the plains, and the largest of the four relief classes.

Why not the others: Every wrong option is another class's share from the same table: 300–600 m is about 31%, 600–900 m about 6%, above 900 m less than 1%. Read the first and last rows together and the whole geography of the state falls out: more than half of Rajasthan lies below 300 metres, and less than one per cent rises above 900.

(d) The uplands and plateau, 300–600 m — spread on both flanks of the Aravalli and in the south-eastern plateau.

Why not the others: The altitude band and the share have to be learnt as one item, because a question can hand you either half. The band is also the one that contains the Hadoti plateau, and plateau country in Chittorgarh and Pratapgarh.

(a) Less than 1%, holding the highest Aravalli summits.

Why not the others: (b) About 6% is the 600–900 m class, which is the Aravalli range as a whole — and confusing the two is confusing the range with its peaks. The state defined in the popular imagination by its hill forts is, by area, overwhelmingly flat.

(c) Both the western sandy desert and the eastern river plains — two quite different things under one heading. The eastern plains hold the Banas basin, the Chambal basin and the Chhappan plain, the middle Mahi basin, and are the most suitable land in the state for agriculture.

Why not the others: (b) The Hadoti plateau belongs to the 300–600 m class, and (d) the Aravalli's flanks belong there too. The lesson is the one this class teaches: same altitude, opposite agricultural value, which is why "plains" on its own is never a sufficient answer about Rajasthan.

(b) 1,722 m, at Mount Abu, in the southern Aravalli.

Why not the others: (a) 1,220 is 1,722 with its digits shuffled, which is how this number is usually got wrong. (c) 692 km is the length of the range, not the height of its summit — a units error that survives surprisingly often. (d) 900 m is the floor of the highest relief class, not a peak.

(a) Ser > Jarga > Sajjangarh > Taragarh. Learn it as a chain rather than as four separate heights, because that is the form the question takes.

Why not the others: (b) is the trap, and it moves only one pair — Ser and Jarga swapped. Ser is the second-highest peak in Rajasthan after Guru Shikhar, and holding that single fact defeats both (b) and (d).

(c) Guru Shikhar (Mount Abu) in the south-west to Khetri in the north-east. Learn the terminal points as a pair, because they fix the direction.

Why not the others: (a) reverses the compass, and the reversal is self-refuting: Guru Shikhar is the range's highest point, so the Aravalli is tallest exactly where it begins and dwindles as it runs north-east — which is why the ranges break up beyond Ajmer. (b) Alwar and (d) Ajmer are places the range passes, not where it ends.

(b) 60% north-west and arid, 40% south-east and more fertile — the Rajasthan Environment Department's own words, and the single most useful number in this chapter.

Why not the others: (a) reverses the proportions and (d) reverses the character, and both are worth reading slowly, because the two halves of this fact are separately testable. It is not a fact about a mountain; it is the state's water divide expressed as a proportion. One range, and it allocates three-fifths of Rajasthan to the desert side.

(d) The Rajasthan Foundation's, which also lists the Aravalli Range as one of its four topographical divisions.

Why not the others: (a) is the near-miss worth getting right: two arms of the same government describe the range, and they contribute different things. The Environment Department gives the course, Guru Shikhar to Khetri, and the 60:40 split; the Rajasthan Foundation gives the length, about 692 km. (b) Punjab's border is 89 km and (c) the state's width 869 km.

(c) is the incorrect statement. The Aravalli is rich in metallic minerals specifically, which is not the same as all types.

Why not the others: (a), (b) and (d) are all true, and (d) carries the word that matters — discontinuous. The range has its greatest extent from Sirohi, Udaipur and Rajsamand up to Ajmer, and beyond Ajmer, through Jaipur and Alwar, the ranges become broken and scattered. Note also what is not on this list: it is not true that all rivers of Rajasthan rise in the Aravalli — the Chambal, for one, rises in Madhya Pradesh. Read the qualifier before the noun.

(a) Desert, Aravalli hill region, Plains and the South-eastern plateau — the Hadoti region.

Why not the others: Each wrong option is a real scheme, drawn by somebody, for a purpose. (b) is the Rajasthan Foundation's four topographical divisions; (c) is four of the Environment Department's six; (d) is the first four of V. C. Mishra's seven regions. Knowing which scheme a question is drawn from matters more than knowing any one of them, and a question that names no scholar wants the standard four.

(d) The Luni Basin and the Shekhawati region.

Why not the others: These sub-region names belong to none of the standard four-fold schemes, which is why they have to be held separately from them. (a) Hanumangarh and Sri Ganganagar are the Ghaggar Plain's districts, offered here one slot out of place, and that single displacement is the whole trap.

(b) Hanumangarh and Sri Ganganagar, in the far north of the state.

Why not the others: (c) Jhunjhunu and Sikar are Shekhawati, a sub-region of Rajasthan Bangar; (d) Barmer and Jaisalmer are the Western Arid region. Sri Ganganagar is also a Pakistan-border district, and Hanumangarh is not — a pair that shares a plain does not share a frontier.

(c). The salt lakes are not a separate fact from the inland drainage; they are its consequence — which is why Sambhar and its neighbours sit where they do.

Why not the others: (a) states something true about the Aravalli and makes it do the wrong work: rain shadow explains aridity, not salinity. A pair of facts that always appear together in the same line of a table is usually a cause and its effect, and it is worth asking which is which before the exam does.

(a) Eastern Plains about 23.3%, Hadoti Plateau about 9.6%. The Western Plain is described only as the largest portion of the state, and the Aravalli Range only by its length, about 692 km.

Why not the others: (c) 31% and 51% are relief-class shares by altitude, from a different table altogether — the classic cross-table swap. (d) attaches the two percentages to the two divisions the Foundation deliberately leaves unquantified, which is the error to watch: the Foundation gives percentages for only two of its four divisions, and inventing the other two is not an answer.

(b) Seven regions, in Rajasthan ka Bhugol, published by the National Book Trust in 1968.

Why not the others: (c) borrows Tiwari and Saxena's 1994 title, Rajasthan ka Pradeshik Bhugol, and attaches Mishra's count to it. (d) is Ram Lochan Singh, 1971 — two macro-regions, four sub-regions and twelve micro-regions, and his was an all-India scheme in which Rajasthan appears as a piece of something larger. Three scholars, three years, three counts: 1968 seven, 1971 two-four-twelve, 1994 physical regions aligned to district boundaries.

(d) Irrigation alone. Both regions receive 15–25 cm; the Canal region — Sri Ganganagar, western Bikaner, northern Jaisalmer — is desert that receives water it does not get from the sky.

Why not the others: (a) 25–50 cm is the Semi-arid region's rainfall, the tract west of the Aravalli covering Jalore, Pali, Nagaur and Jhunjhunu. Mishra is classifying by water available, not water fallen — and that is a better answer about the Indira Gandhi Canal's significance than any figure.

(d). All states adopt the criterion of "100 metres above local relief", which had been in force in Rajasthan since 9 January 2006 — Rajasthan's own rule became the national one.

Why not the others: (b) is the definition of the Aravalli Range, not of an Aravalli Hill, and the two are one line apart in the same table: the Range is all landforms within 500 metres of two adjoining hills of 100 metres or more. (a) and (c) reach for altitude above sea level, which is precisely what the definition avoids — it is written in terms of local relief and a contour. A question about what counts as "the Aravalli" now has a legal answer, and the answer is a contour rule, not a description of scenery.

(b) An interim moratorium, applied uniformly across the whole landscape from Gujarat to the National Capital Region, treating the range as a continuous geological ridge.

Why not the others: (a) Existing mines were not shut, they were tightened — the states were directed to enforce strict compliance with environmental safeguards for mines already operating. (c) The uniformity across states is the point of the direction, and follows from the single definition in Q36. (d) reverses the sequence: the ban holds until the plan is prepared, and no such plan has been found published as of 23 August 2026. A direction is not a document, and "directed" is not "exists".

(a) R is not merely consistent with A, it is the proof of A. A state beginning at 23°30′ N would lie wholly north of the Tropic and could not be crossed by it. The Forest Survey of India's 23°4′ N points the same way.

(b) Both statements are true, and R is the reason the printed pairing cannot be right — which is the opposite of explaining it. The table is reproduced as printed rather than silently corrected; Dholpur is the likely intended district, and it appears in Mishra's row 5. Carry the pairing as a known misprint, not as geography.

(d) R is true and it makes A false. Where the standard books disagree, the attribution is not safely testable, and revision time spent on minor-peak attributions is time taken from the four relief classes and the 60:40 split. Guru Shikhar and the descending chain of major peaks are settled; the minor ones are not.

(c) A is true — the plains class is about 51%. R states the split backwards: it is 60% to the north-west, arid, and 40% to the south-east, more fertile. Two different divisions of the same state, one by altitude and one by the watershed, and neither derives from the other.

(a) R explains A, and the mechanism is worth stating in one line: a continuous barrier in the south-west wrings out the monsoon; a broken one beyond Ajmer does not stop it, and does not shelter what lies behind it either. The 60:40 proportion is that mechanism expressed as area. A statement that rainfall is not affected by the Aravalli states the opposite of the truth.

(c) The shares rise as the altitude falls, without exception, which is the check to run on any code before ticking it. (a) swaps the two large shares and (b) the two small ones — the two swaps an examiner actually makes.

(a) (c) swaps the two government schemes, which is the harder half of this question — the Foundation divides the state four ways for planning and tourism, so its units are whole districts; the Environment Department divides it six ways by landform, which is why it can name badlands and tableland as units in their own right. Do not treat the disagreement as an error: a scheme is built for a purpose, and the purpose determines the boundaries.

(d) (b) swaps the two entries that are given by district names, which is the swap to expect, since Ghaggar Plain and Rajasthan Bangar are the two whose descriptions look alike. The Chhappan plain is the middle Mahi basin and belongs with the eastern plains, alongside the Banas and the Chambal basins.