BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 84 of 144

Correct — A, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain, Fujairah, Ras Al-Khaimah. The UAE Government's own portal (u.ae, 'The Seven Emirates') names exactly these seven and no others: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah. The same portal's fact sheet describes the country as "a constitutional federation of seven emirates" and lists the five federal authorities the Constitution provides for — the Supreme Council, the President and the Vice-President, the Cabinet, the Federal National Council and the Federal Judiciary. The seven are not a loose grouping of cities: under Articles 45–50 the Federal Supreme Council is the highest constitutional authority in the country, it "consists of the Rulers of all the emirates composing the Federation", and "each emirate has a single vote in the deliberations of the Council". The number seven is therefore the number of votes in the state's supreme body, which is why the roster is fixed and closed. The portal also dates the union's assembly precisely, and those dates are what make the wrong options wrong. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan became Ruler of Abu Dhabi on 6 August 1966; he met Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of Dubai at Al Samha on 18 February 1968, and from 25 to 27 February 1968 the rulers of nine states — the seven Trucial States plus Bahrain and Qatar — held a constitutional conference in Dubai and agreed an eleven-point basis for a proposed 'Federation of the Arab Emirates'. Bahrain and Qatar left those talks and took independence separately. On 18 July 1971 the rulers of six of the seven Trucial States, Ras Al Khaimah excepted, declared the union in the words the portal still quotes: "the Supreme Council … declares the United Arab Emirates as an independent sovereign state being a part of the Arab World." The federation was formally established on 2 December 1971 — the UAE's National Day — with Zayed as founding father and first President until his death in 2004, and Ras Al Khaimah acceded on 10 February 1972 as the seventh and last emirate. The internal hierarchy is worth carrying, because BPSC and UPSC both mine it: Abu Dhabi is the federal capital and by far the largest emirate at 67,340 sq km, with a 2024 population of 4.14 million and a GDP of AED 1.2 trillion (about USD 326 billion); Dubai is second at about 3,759,864; Sharjah third with 1.8 million (2022); Ras Al Khaimah fourth at roughly 345,000; Ajman is the smallest of the seven (504,846 in 2017) and Umm Al Quwain the second smallest and least populated (49,159 at the 2005 count); Fujairah, 202,667 in 2014, is the only emirate lying wholly on the eastern coast, facing the Gulf of Oman rather than the Arabian Gulf. Option (a) is the only list that carries all seven of those names and nothing else.

• (b)Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Jeddah, Kuwait, Bahrain, Umm Al-Quwain — Only four of these seven are emirates — Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman and Umm Al-Quwain. Jeddah is a Saudi Arabian city in Makkah Province on the Red Sea, the gateway port through which pilgrims reach Mecca, and it sits inside a unitary kingdom that has provinces and appointed governors, not rulers with a seat on a federal council. Kuwait and Bahrain are sovereign states with their own seats at the United Nations and their own membership of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council — and a state that is itself a GCC member cannot simultaneously be a constituent emirate of another GCC member. The list also omits three real emirates: Abu Dhabi (the federal capital and largest emirate), Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah. Missing Abu Dhabi alone is enough to reject it.
• (c)Umm Al-Quwain, Fujairah, Ras Al-Khaimah, Riyadh, Dammam, Taif, Dubai — Four real emirates (Umm Al-Quwain, Fujairah, Ras Al-Khaimah, Dubai) padded out with three Saudi Arabian cities: Riyadh is Saudi Arabia's national capital in the interior Najd, Dammam is the administrative seat of the oil-bearing Eastern Province on the Arabian Gulf coast, and Taif is the highland city of Makkah Province long used as a summer seat of government. None of the three is a federal unit of anything — Saudi Arabia is a unitary kingdom divided into provinces under governors appointed by the King, so no Saudi city has a ruler who could sit on the UAE's Supreme Council. Three genuine emirates are missing from the list: Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ajman, which are the first, third and smallest of the seven respectively.
• (d)Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait — The most dangerous option, because five of its seven entries are genuine emirates and only the last two are wrong. Bahrain and Kuwait are independent Arab states that have never been part of the UAE. Bahrain feels plausible for a reason a well-read candidate can actually cite: it was one of the nine states whose rulers met in Dubai from 25 to 27 February 1968 and agreed the eleven-point basis for a 'Federation of the Arab Emirates', alongside Qatar and the seven Trucial States — but Bahrain and Qatar both walked away and took independence separately in 1971, and only the seven Trucial States federated. Kuwait was never even in those talks; it had already been independent since 1961. The option also silently drops two real emirates, Umm Al-Quwain and Ras Al-Khaimah, so it fails the completeness test as well as the intruder test.

The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven hereditary monarchies on the south-eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, facing the Arabian (Persian) Gulf. Their modern shape was cut by British sea power rather than by dynastic conquest. The u.ae history timeline records that after the British defeated the Qawasim in 1820 they signed a series of agreements with the sheikhs of the individual emirates between 1820 and 1853, binding them to keep the peace at sea and to refrain from building large ships or fortifications along the coast — the truces from which the name 'Trucial States' comes. In 1892 Britain went further, entering into Exclusive Agreements under which, in the portal's own words, the Trucial States "could neither dispose any of their territories except to the United Kingdom nor enter into relationships with any foreign government without the consent of the United Kingdom", in return for British defence against foreign aggression. That arrangement froze the roster of sheikhdoms for three-quarters of a century. When Britain declared in early 1968 that it would withdraw from the Gulf by the end of 1971, the nine sheikhdoms then under those treaties — the seven Trucial States plus Bahrain and Qatar — met in Dubai from 25 to 27 February 1968 to negotiate a Federation of the Arab Emirates. Bahrain and Qatar took independence on their own; six Trucial States federated on 2 December 1971 and Ras Al Khaimah joined on 10 February 1972. The Constitution vests power in five federal authorities: the Supreme Council of Rulers, the President and Vice-President, the Cabinet, the Federal National Council and the Federal Judiciary. Considerable power stays with the individual emirates: each keeps its own ruler and its own administration, and every emirate — however small — has exactly one vote on the Supreme Council, so Umm Al Quwain with 49,159 people counts equally with Abu Dhabi's 4.14 million in that chamber.

This is a list question, and the fastest route is elimination by category rather than recall of all seven names. Run two tests in order. First, the intruder test: scan each option for a name that is a sovereign country or a city of another country. Kuwait and Bahrain are UN member states, and Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam and Taif are all in Saudi Arabia — a unitary kingdom whose cities sit in provinces under appointed governors and so can never be 'emirates' in the UAE sense of a ruler with a vote on the Federal Supreme Council. That one test kills (b), (c) and (d) without needing to recall the full roster. Second, the completeness test: a correct list must contain seven distinct emirates, so count how many genuine ones each option actually carries — (b) has four, (c) has four, (d) has five, and only (a) has all seven. Running the count also protects you against a variant of this question that swaps a real emirate out without putting an obvious foreign name in. The single discriminating fact is that Bahrain is not an emirate of the UAE. It is the one name a well-read candidate is most likely to accept, precisely because the extra reading points the wrong way: Bahrain genuinely sat at the nine-state Dubai conference of February 1968, it is an Arab monarchy on the same gulf, and it shares GCC membership with the UAE today. Option (d) is built entirely on that hesitation, which is why five of its seven entries are correct. The rule that resolves it is that GCC membership and UAE membership are mutually exclusive: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are six separate members of one council, so none of the first five can be a part of the sixth.

• The seven emirates, per the UAE Government portal u.ae: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah
• The UAE was established as a federation on 2 December 1971 (its National Day); Ras Al Khaimah acceded on 10 February 1972 as the seventh and last emirate
• Abu Dhabi: federal capital, 67,340 sq km, population 4.14 million in 2024 — the largest emirate by both area and population; Dubai second at about 3.76 million
• Ajman is the smallest emirate (504,846 people in 2017); Umm Al Quwain is the least populated (49,159 in 2005); Fujairah is the only emirate lying entirely on the Gulf of Oman coast
• Before 1971 these were the Trucial States, named for the truces imposed after Britain defeated the Qawasim in 1820 and the agreements of 1820–1853; the 1892 Exclusive Agreements barred them from ceding territory to, or dealing with, any power but the United Kingdom; Britain announced its withdrawal from the Gulf in early 1968, effective end-1971
• Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain and Kuwait are states, not emirates of the UAE
• Articles 45–50 of the UAE Constitution: the Federal Supreme Council is the highest constitutional authority, is composed of the Rulers of all the emirates, and 'each emirate has a single vote in the deliberations of the Council' — seven emirates, seven votes
• 25–27 February 1968: the rulers of nine Gulf states — the seven Trucial States plus Bahrain and Qatar — held a constitutional conference in Dubai and agreed an eleven-point basis for a 'Federation of the Arab Emirates'; Bahrain and Qatar later left it
• 18 July 1971: six rulers, all but Ras Al Khaimah, declared 'the United Arab Emirates as an independent sovereign state being a part of the Arab World'; Sheikh Zayed had become Ruler of Abu Dhabi on 6 August 1966 and was the UAE's first President from 1971 until his death in 2004
• Arabic is the sole official language of the UAE, but u.ae records that its courts also work in five others — Chinese, English, French, Hindi and Russian — Hindi's presence being a measure of the size of the Indian community there

• Counting Bahrain, Kuwait or Qatar as emirates of the UAE — all three are sovereign states, though Bahrain and Qatar were part of the 1968–71 federation negotiations
• Assuming Dubai is the capital of the UAE; the capital is Abu Dhabi city, in the emirate of Abu Dhabi
• Confusing the seven emirates with the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — different lists, and the UAE is one member of the GCC, not seven

BPSC asks world political geography as a one-line list-identification item — name the emirates, name the members, name the capitals — where the whole test is spotting an intruder, and where the printed options do the recall work for you if you can classify each name. UPSC almost never hands you the full list; it puts the same knowledge into a two-statement or odd-one-out frame, as in 2008 ('Ajman is one of the seven Emirates of the UAE' / 'Ras al-Khaimah was the last Sheikhdom to join') and 2016 ('Which of the following is not a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council?'). The practical consequence is that for BPSC you should be able to recognise the seven names, while for UPSC you additionally need the rank order, the accession dates and the GCC roster, because those are what a statement-pair question turns on.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following emirates of the UAE lies entirely on the eastern coast, facing the Gulf of Oman?

  • (a)Fujairah
  • (b)Ajman
  • (c)Umm Al-Quwain
  • (d)Ras Al-Khaimah

  Answer(a) Fujairah — the UAE Government portal describes it as the only emirate located completely on the eastern coast; the other six front the Persian Gulf.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The United Arab Emirates was established as a federation on which date?

  • (a)6 August 1966
  • (b)18 July 1971
  • (c)2 December 1971
  • (d)10 February 1972

  Answer(c) 2 December 1971 — the UAE's National Day. 18 July 1971 was the day six rulers declared the union, and 10 February 1972 is when Ras Al Khaimah joined as the seventh emirate.