'Maitree' is a Joint Military Exercise between India and:

Correct — B, Thailand. Maitree is the annual bilateral exercise between the Indian Army and the Royal Thai Army, held in one country and then the other. The thirteenth edition ran from 1 to 15 July 2024 at Fort Vachiraprakan in Tak Province of Thailand, with 76 personnel a side — the Indian contingent drawn mainly from a battalion of the Ladakh Scouts, the Thai from the 1st Battalion of the 14 Infantry Regiment — training on jungle survival, navigation, day and night firing, rappelling and casualty evacuation, with counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism in jungle and built-up terrain as the stated aim under the United Nations charter. India hosted the fourteenth edition in Meghalaya, which opened in the first week of September 2025, days before this paper was set. The other three names in the option list all have exercises of their own, and none of them is called Maitree: Sampriti is the army exercise with Bangladesh, Mitra Shakti the one with Sri Lanka, and Harimau Shakti the one with Malaysia.

• (a)Bangladesh — The strongest trap, and the word itself is why. Maitree means friendship, and India's Bangladesh links carry that word everywhere — the Maitree Express, the Kolkata-Dhaka train running since 14 April 2008, and Maitri Setu, the bridge over the Feni. The army exercise with Bangladesh, though, is Sampriti; the naval one is Bongosagar.
• (c)Malaysia — The India-Malaysia army exercise is Harimau Shakti — harimau is Malay for tiger — most recently at Bentong Camp in Malaysia from 2 to 15 December 2024, and it too trains for jungle warfare.
• (d)Sri Lanka — That exercise is Mitra Shakti. Its tenth edition ran from 12 to 24 August 2024 at the Army Training School at Maduru Oya in Sri Lanka, with an Indian contingent of 106 built around a Rajputana Rifles battalion.

India runs a standing calendar of named bilateral and multilateral military exercises, and each partner has its own name that repeats year after year with an edition number. The naming is not random: many carry a word from the partner's language or from a shared Sanskrit-Pali root, which is how the exercise is meant to be recognised. Maitree with Thailand, Sampriti with Bangladesh, Mitra Shakti with Sri Lanka, Surya Kiran with Nepal, Harimau Shakti with Malaysia, Garuda Shakti with Indonesia, Dustlik with Uzbekistan, Yudh Abhyas and Vajra Prahar with the United States.

Questions of this shape are pure recall with one built-in trap, and here the trap is linguistic. Maitree and Mitra Shakti both come from the same root for friendship, so a candidate who reasons only from meaning will hesitate between Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. What settles it is remembering that each partner has exactly one army-exercise name, and Thailand's is the one left over once Sampriti, Mitra Shakti and Harimau Shakti are attached to their partners. The Thai connection also has a logic worth holding on to: Maitri and the Pali metta are the same word, and Thailand is a Theravada Buddhist country whose army exercises with India focus on jungle terrain that both sides know. A caution about currency — edition numbers, venues and participating regiments change every year, so learn the pairing of name to country and treat the year's venue as detail.

• Maitree is the annual Indian Army-Royal Thai Army exercise, alternating between the two countries.
• The thirteenth edition was held from 1 to 15 July 2024 at Fort Vachiraprakan, Tak Province, Thailand, with 76 personnel from each side.
• The Indian contingent for that edition came mainly from a battalion of the Ladakh Scouts; the Thai from 1st Battalion, 14 Infantry Regiment of 4 Division.
• The fourteenth edition opened in Meghalaya in the first week of September 2025, with India as host.
• Army exercises with the three wrong options: Sampriti (Bangladesh), Mitra Shakti (Sri Lanka), Harimau Shakti (Malaysia).

• Letting the meaning of the word decide. Maitree and Mitra Shakti share a root but belong to different partners.
• Attaching Maitree to Bangladesh because of the Maitree Express and Maitri Setu.
• Memorising this year's edition number and venue instead of the name-to-country pairing, which is what papers actually test.

Nearly always as exercise name to partner country, sometimes reversed, and occasionally as a statements item mixing the partner, the venue and the services involved.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  'Harimau Shakti' is a joint military exercise between India and which one of the following countries?

  • (a)Indonesia
  • (b)Malaysia
  • (c)Singapore
  • (d)Vietnam

  Answer(b) Malaysia — harimau is Malay for tiger, and the exercise trains both armies for jungle operations; the Indonesian counterpart is Garuda Shakti.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The joint military exercise 'Sampriti' is conducted between India and which one of the following countries?

  • (a)Nepal
  • (b)Bhutan
  • (c)Bangladesh
  • (d)Myanmar

  Answer(c) Bangladesh — Sampriti is the India-Bangladesh army exercise, while Bongosagar is the naval one between the two.