BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 11 of 142

Correct — A, Uttar Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh is the second largest Indian State by area at 308,252 square kilometres and it is landlocked, so its whole perimeter is shared with other States — five of them, and only five: Rajasthan to the north-west, Uttar Pradesh to the north-east, Chhattisgarh to the east, Maharashtra to the south and Gujarat to the west. Of those, the Uttar Pradesh frontier is the longest and the Gujarat frontier the shortest — the pair of facts usually taught together for this State. The reason the Uttar Pradesh boundary wins is visible on any political map: Uttar Pradesh does not merely touch Madhya Pradesh at a corner, it wraps around the entire northern and north-eastern edge of the State. The line begins in the north-west at Morena and Bhind, where the Chambal separates the two, runs east through the whole Bundelkhand belt past Datia, Tikamgarh, Chhatarpur and Panna, and continues to Rewa, Satna, Sidhi and Singrauli in the east — an almost unbroken frontier several hundred kilometres wide in longitude, and a highly convoluted one, because for long stretches it follows the meanders of the Chambal, the Ken and the Son rather than a surveyed straight line. One of the two independent derivations behind this card measured it rather than recalled it, summing the boundary segments the two States' administrative outlines actually share, and found the Uttar Pradesh frontier roughly forty per cent longer than the Rajasthan one, with Maharashtra a clear third, Chhattisgarh fourth and Gujarat much the shortest. The ranking, not the absolute figure, is what a question like this tests, and Uttar Pradesh leads it comfortably.

• (b)Rajasthan — The genuine runner-up, and the reason this question is not trivial. The Rajasthan boundary runs across the whole north-west of Madhya Pradesh, from the Gujarat corner through the Malwa plateau to the Chambal near Morena, and it is long — but it is confined to one flank, whereas Uttar Pradesh occupies the entire north and north-east. Measured, it comes out well short of the Uttar Pradesh figure.
• (c)Andhra Pradesh — It does not touch Madhya Pradesh at all, and the option is a leftover from an older map. Undivided Madhya Pradesh DID border Andhra Pradesh, through the Bastar region in its far south-east. The Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Act of November 2000 carved that whole region out as Chhattisgarh, and with it went the Andhra frontier. Since then Madhya Pradesh's south-eastern neighbour has been Chhattisgarh.
• (d)Maharashtra — A real neighbour and a substantial one, running along the Satpura belt across the whole south of the State from Burhanpur and Khandwa through Betul and Chhindwara to Balaghat. But it is a southern flank rather than a wrap-around, it is shorter than both the Uttar Pradesh and the Rajasthan boundaries on measurement, and much of it follows the Satpura crest rather than a winding river.

Madhya Pradesh is the classic 'heart of India' State — landlocked, central, and bounded entirely by other States. It was the largest State in India by area until November 2000, when the Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Act split off its south-eastern districts as Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan took first place. The State was itself assembled in 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act out of four units: the old Madhya Bharat with its capital at Gwalior, Vindhya Pradesh, Bhopal State and the Hindi-speaking part of the Central Provinces and Berar, with the Marathi-speaking Vidarbha region including Nagpur going to Bombay State. Its physical structure is simple to hold: the Vindhya range across the middle, the Satpura range to its south, and the Narmada running west between them through a rift valley — the longest river in the State and the one that gives the trough its shape. The Tapti runs parallel to the south, also in a rift valley.

Boundary-length questions look unanswerable without a gazetteer, and they are not. Two visual rules settle most of them. First, a neighbour that wraps around two sides of a State almost always beats a neighbour on one side, however large that neighbour is — which is precisely the Uttar Pradesh case here. Second, a river boundary is far longer than it looks, because it follows every meander; the Chambal, the Ken and the Son all serve as sections of the Madhya Pradesh–Uttar Pradesh line, which inflates it further. The third useful move on this particular question is elimination rather than measurement: one of the four options does not border Madhya Pradesh at all, and knowing that Chhattisgarh took the Bastar frontier away in 2000 removes it instantly. That leaves three real neighbours, of which the one you can picture wrapping around the top is the answer. It is worth carrying the companion fact as well — Gujarat has the shortest boundary with Madhya Pradesh — because BPSC and other State commissions ask the pair in both directions.

• Madhya Pradesh covers 308,252 square kilometres, is the second largest State in India by area and the fifth largest by population with over 72 million residents.
• It borders exactly five States: Rajasthan (north-west), Uttar Pradesh (north-east), Chhattisgarh (east), Maharashtra (south) and Gujarat (west) — longest boundary with Uttar Pradesh, shortest with Gujarat.
• The Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Act of November 2000 created Chhattisgarh out of the State's south-east, ending Madhya Pradesh's frontier with Andhra Pradesh and costing it the title of India's largest State.
• Madhya Pradesh was formed on 1 November 1956 by merging Madhya Bharat, Vindhya Pradesh and Bhopal State with the Hindi-speaking part of the Central Provinces and Berar; Marathi-speaking Vidarbha went to Bombay State.
• The Narmada is the longest river in Madhya Pradesh and flows westward through a rift valley between the Vindhya range to its north and the Satpura range to its south; the Tapti runs parallel to the south, also in a rift valley.

• Choosing Andhra Pradesh from memory of a pre-2000 map. Chhattisgarh has stood between the two States since November 2000.
• Assuming the largest neighbour has the longest boundary. Rajasthan is larger than Uttar Pradesh in area but touches Madhya Pradesh on one flank only.
• Forgetting the companion fact. Madhya Pradesh's shortest boundary is with Gujarat, and commissions ask the question in that direction just as often.

BPSC asks boundary geography as a bare superlative — longest boundary, shortest boundary, which district lies on which frontier — and expects the map to be held visually rather than computed. UPSC almost never asks for a single longest boundary; it asks which unit borders the maximum number of others, or gives a list of States and asks which of them touch a named country, so the same map has to be usable for counting as well as for ranking.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Madhya Pradesh shares its boundary with how many other Indian States ?

  • (a)Four
  • (b)Five
  • (c)Six
  • (d)Seven

  Answer(b) Five — Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Undivided Madhya Pradesh touched more, including Andhra Pradesh through Bastar, but that frontier passed to Chhattisgarh in November 2000.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which State has the shortest boundary with Madhya Pradesh ?

  • (a)Gujarat
  • (b)Chhattisgarh
  • (c)Maharashtra
  • (d)Rajasthan

  Answer(a) Gujarat — it touches only the far western edge of Madhya Pradesh, around the Jhabua and Alirajpur districts, and is the shortest of the State's five frontiers. Uttar Pradesh is at the other end of the same list, with the longest.