BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 77 of 142

Correct — A, Muzaffarpur. Two independent kinds of evidence point at the same district, and a third quietly removes half the option list. The first is the geographical indication: 'Shahi Litchi of Bihar' is registered on the GI Registry's list of registered geographical indications under application number 552, and the variety takes its identity from the orchards of the Muzaffarpur belt. The second is institutional — the Indian Council of Agricultural Research sited its National Research Centre on Litchi at Muzaffarpur, which is where the country's litchi research is done, and the district is described in its own official profile as the Lychee Kingdom of India. The soil and climate behind that are specific: the calcium-rich loam of the Burhi Gandak floodplain, high humidity and a short, sharp fruiting season in May and June, a combination the belt around Muzaffarpur has in a way no other part of Bihar does. The third piece of evidence is in the option list itself, and it is worth noticing because it recurs on this paper. Chhapara and Sonpur are not districts of Bihar at all — Chhapra is the headquarters town of Saran district and Sonpur is a town and subdivision inside the same district — so a question that asks 'in which district' has only two genuine candidates, Muzaffarpur and Siwan, and Siwan is a Bhojpur-belt district with no litchi standing.

• (b)Chhapara — Not a district. Chhapra is the headquarters town of Saran district, on the Ghaghara near its confluence with the Ganga — a commercial and administrative centre, historically important as the birthplace of Rajendra Prasad's district, but a town rather than a district and not a litchi-growing tract. The option fails on the stem's own word before any agriculture is considered.
• (c)Sonpur — Also not a district. Sonpur is a town and subdivision of Saran district at the confluence of the Ganga and the Gandak, famous for the Sonepur Mela, the month-long cattle fair that BPSC itself asked about in the 70th CCE paper of December 2024. Two of these four options therefore sit inside the same district, Saran, which is a strong signal that neither is the intended answer.
• (d)Siwan — A genuine district, and therefore the only real competitor — which is why it is placed last. Siwan lies in the Bhojpuri-speaking west of Bihar, adjoining Uttar Pradesh, and its agriculture is dominated by paddy, wheat, maize and sugarcane rather than horticulture. It carries no litchi reputation, no GI and no research institution, and nothing in the state's fruit statistics places it near the north-central belt.

Litchi is a subtropical evergreen of the soapberry family, and it is unusually fussy about where it will grow: it needs a warm, humid summer, a cool but frost-free winter to set flower buds, deep well-drained soil, and protection from hot dry winds while the fruit is filling. That combination exists in only a narrow band of India — north Bihar above all, with Uttarakhand's tarai, West Bengal, Jharkhand and pockets of the north-east — and Bihar dominates the national crop. The Shahi variety is the prized one, small-seeded, aromatic and short-lived once picked, which is precisely the commercial problem: the fruit bruises easily and its season lasts only a few weeks, so cold chain and processing matter more for litchi than for almost any other Indian fruit. Muzaffarpur's dominance is therefore not only agronomic but institutional — the GI, the research centre, the packhouses and the traders' networks are all there, and each reinforces the others. The district is also linked in public health literature to an outbreak of acute encephalopathy among malnourished children in the litchi season, which is a separate topic often asked alongside.

Read the stem's noun before its subject. It asks for a *district*, and two of the four options are towns — Chhapra and Sonpur are both in Saran district. That observation costs nothing and halves the question, and it is a habit worth building on Bihar papers generally, because option lists here are routinely padded with well-known place names that are not districts. What remains is a straight comparison between Muzaffarpur in north-central Bihar and Siwan in the far west, and the crop geography decides it: litchi belongs to the humid, calcium-rich alluvium north of the Ganga around the Burhi Gandak, not to the drier Bhojpur plain. If the crop-to-district map is uncertain, the GI list is the shortcut, because a GI is by definition a place-tied product — Shahi Litchi of Bihar, Katarni rice, Bhagalpuri Zardalu mango, Magahi paan, Mithila makhana each name their own tract, and a candidate who has learned Bihar's GI list has effectively learned its crop map.

• 'Shahi Litchi of Bihar' is registered on the GI Registry's list of registered geographical indications under application number 552; the variety is identified with the Muzaffarpur belt.
• The Indian Council of Agricultural Research runs its National Research Centre on Litchi at Muzaffarpur, and the district's official profile calls it the Lychee Kingdom of India.
• Chhapra is the headquarters town of Saran district and Sonpur is a town and subdivision of the same district — neither is a district of Bihar.
• Bihar's other geographical indications map the state's crop geography: Bhagalpuri Zardalu (551), Katarni rice (553), Magahi paan (554), Silao Khaja (584) and Mithila Makhana (696).
• Litchi needs humid summers, a frost-free but cool winter for bud formation and deep well-drained soil, which confines Indian production largely to north Bihar, the Uttarakhand tarai, West Bengal and Jharkhand.

• Answering before checking the stem's noun. Chhapara and Sonpur are towns of Saran district; a district question cannot be answered with a town.
• Assuming a famous town must head its crop. Sonpur's fame is the cattle fair, not fruit; fame in one field says nothing about output in another.
• Confusing litchi with mango. Bihar's GI mango is the Bhagalpuri Zardalu, from a different district and a different belt entirely.

BPSC asks Bihar's agriculture as a district superlative — which district leads in a named crop — and pads the option list with recognisable Bihar place names that are not districts at all, so the first check is administrative rather than agricultural. It uses the same place names across editions in different roles, as with Sonpur, asked as a cattle fair in the 70th CCE paper of December 2024 and offered here as a litchi decoy. UPSC does not ask district-level crop leadership; it asks state-level leadership or the law behind a geographical indication.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'Shahi Litchi of Bihar' carries a geographical indication associated chiefly with which district ?

  • (a)Bhagalpur
  • (b)Muzaffarpur
  • (c)Darbhanga
  • (d)Gaya

  Answer(b) Muzaffarpur — the belt that gives the variety its identity, and the site of ICAR's National Research Centre on Litchi. Bhagalpur's GI fruit is the Zardalu mango and Mithila's is makhana.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Sonepur Mela, the month-long cattle fair, is held at the confluence of the Ganga with which river ?

  • (a)Son
  • (b)Kosi
  • (c)Gandak
  • (d)Punpun

  Answer(c) Gandak — Sonpur stands at the Ganga-Gandak confluence in Saran district, opposite Patna, and the fair is traditionally held from Kartik Purnima.