MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 23 of 100

Correct — option (3), Son. Read the stem carefully first: the word 'not' is printed in bold, so this is a negative question and the answer is the one river in the list that does NOT belong to the Indus system. Three of the four options are members of the Punjab five — the tributaries whose combined waters give the Punjab its name — and only the Son sits in a different drainage basin altogether. The Sindhu, or Indus, rises near Lake Mansarovar in Tibet, flows north-west through Ladakh, turns south through Pakistan and reaches the Arabian Sea. Its great left-bank tributaries are the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej; these five gather one into another in the Punjab plains — the Beas joins the Sutlej, the Sutlej joins the Chenab, and the combined stream, called the Panjnad, meets the Indus. The paper prints 'Chinab' for Chenab and 'Biyas' for Beas, but both are unmistakably members of that group. The Son belongs to the Ganga system and to a completely different part of India: it rises on the Amarkantak plateau in Madhya Pradesh — the same upland that gives rise to the Narmada — flows north-east through Madhya Pradesh and across Bihar, and joins the Ganga a little upstream of Patna. It is one of the Ganga's major right-bank tributaries, and it is the only right-bank tributary of the Ganga besides the Yamuna that carries a substantial volume, because most of the Ganga's water comes from its Himalayan left-bank feeders while the peninsular right-bank streams like the Son, the Chambal-fed Yamuna system and the Damodar drain older, harder plateau country. Nothing in the Son's course brings it anywhere near the Indus basin, and the Vindhya-Satpura upland separates the two systems entirely. So the Son is the exception the question is asking for, and option (3) is the answer.

• (1)Chinab — The Chenab — printed here as 'Chinab' — is a genuine tributary of the Indus and therefore cannot be the answer to a question that asks which river is NOT one. It is the largest of the five Punjab rivers by volume, formed in Himachal Pradesh by the meeting of the Chandra and Bhaga streams in the Lahaul valley, from which it takes its older name Chandrabhaga. It flows through Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan, where it receives the Ravi and the Sutlej before the combined Panjnad joins the Indus. On a negative-stem question a correct fact is exactly what has to be rejected.
• (2)Biyas — The Beas — printed here as 'Biyas' — is also a true Indus tributary, so it too has to be rejected on a question asking for the exception. It rises near the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh, flows past Mandi and Kullu into the Punjab plains, and joins the Sutlej at Harike, from where its water reaches the Indus through the Sutlej and the Panjnad. Of all the Punjab rivers it is the only one whose entire course lies within India, which is a distinguishing fact worth holding but does not remove it from the Indus system.
• (4)Ravi — The Ravi is the third of the three Indus tributaries offered here and is equally disqualified from being the answer. It rises in the Kullu hills of Himachal Pradesh, flows past Chamba and along part of the India-Pakistan boundary before entering Pakistan and joining the Chenab. It is the smallest of the Punjab rivers by discharge, which sometimes makes candidates hesitate over it, but size has nothing to do with membership of a drainage basin — the Ravi drains into the Indus and so belongs to the Indus system.

India's northern rivers fall into three great Himalayan systems — the Indus, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra — and the boundaries between them are watersheds, not political lines. The Indus system drains the western end: the main stream rises in Tibet near Mansarovar, and its five left-bank tributaries, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, rise in the western Himalaya and the Himachal ranges and converge stepwise in the Punjab plains before entering the Indus as one river, the Panjnad. The Ganga system drains the centre and receives two very different classes of tributary: the Himalayan left-bank rivers such as the Ghaghara, Gandak and Kosi, which are perennial and snow-fed, and the peninsular right-bank rivers such as the Yamuna's Chambal and Betwa feeders, the Son and the Damodar, which rise on the old plateaus of central India and are far more seasonal. The Son is the clearest example of that second class: it rises on the Amarkantak plateau, the same water-parting from which the Narmada flows west, and its water reaches the Bay of Bengal, not the Arabian Sea.

Drainage-system questions are staple MPSC material precisely because they can be tested by exception — give four river names, three from one basin and one from another, and the candidate has to know the membership list rather than merely recognise the names. This item adds a second layer of difficulty by printing the negation in bold: on the page 'not' stands out, but a candidate reading fast can register 'which of the following is the tributary of river Sindhu' and confidently mark a correct tributary. The discipline is to identify the polarity of the stem before looking at the options at all, and on this paper the negation is always carried by a single bold word. The useful preparation is to hold the tributary lists of the Indus and the Ganga as lists, with the peninsular right-bank Ganga tributaries — Son, Chambal, Betwa, Ken, Damodar — kept distinctly in mind, because those are the names most often planted among Himalayan rivers.

• The Sindhu or Indus rises near Lake Mansarovar in Tibet and its five major tributaries are the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, which combine as the Panjnad before meeting the main river.
• The Son rises on the Amarkantak plateau in Madhya Pradesh — the same upland from which the Narmada rises — and joins the Ganga upstream of Patna as one of its major right-bank tributaries.
• The Chenab, formed by the union of the Chandra and Bhaga streams in Himachal Pradesh and also called the Chandrabhaga, is the largest of the Punjab rivers by volume.
• The Beas rises near the Rohtang Pass and joins the Sutlej at Harike; it is the only one of the Punjab rivers whose entire course lies within India.
• The Ganga's Himalayan left-bank tributaries are perennial and snow-fed, while its peninsular right-bank tributaries such as the Son and the Chambal rise on old plateau country and are markedly more seasonal.

• Missing the bold 'not' in the stem and marking a river that genuinely is an Indus tributary — on a negative question every true statement is a wrong answer
• Being thrown by the paper's spellings 'Chinab' and 'Biyas' and treating an unfamiliar-looking spelling as an unfamiliar river
• Confusing the Son with the Sutlej on the strength of the first letter and a similar sound, when the two belong to opposite ends of the country
• Assuming the smallest or least familiar river in a list must be the odd one out; the Ravi is the smallest Punjab river here but is still fully part of the Indus system

MPSC asks Indian drainage in two standard shapes: 'which of the following is not a tributary of X', as here, and match-the-columns pairing rivers with their source, their basin or the state they flow through. The wrong options are drawn from adjacent, genuinely important rivers rather than obscure ones, so the question is decided by whether the candidate holds the basin membership lists rather than by whether the river names are familiar. Expect the negation to be printed in bold, and expect peninsular rivers such as the Son, the Chambal and the Damodar to be the names planted among Himalayan tributaries, because they are the ones most often loosely filed under 'north Indian rivers'.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Son river, a major right-bank tributary of the Ganga, rises from which of the following ?

  • (a)The Amarkantak plateau in Madhya Pradesh
  • (b)The Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh
  • (c)The Brahmagiri range in Karnataka
  • (d)The Mahabaleshwar plateau in Maharashtra

  Answer(a) The Amarkantak plateau in Madhya Pradesh — the same upland water-parting from which the Narmada rises and flows west while the Son flows north-east to the Ganga. The Rohtang area gives rise to the Beas, the Brahmagiri range to the Kaveri, and Mahabaleshwar to the Krishna.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The combined stream formed by the Sutlej, Beas, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum before it joins the Indus is known as which of the following ?

  • (a)Panjnad
  • (b)Panchganga
  • (c)Chandrabhaga
  • (d)Zaskar

  Answer(a) Panjnad — the name given to the united waters of the five Punjab rivers where they meet the Indus. Chandrabhaga is the alternative name of the Chenab alone, formed by the Chandra and Bhaga streams; the Zaskar is a tributary of the Indus in Ladakh; and the Panchganga is a tributary of the Krishna in Maharashtra.