MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 21 of 100

Correct — option (3), 'The Eastern tip of main land India is Kibithu in Assam,' is the false statement, and it is false for exactly one reason: the state. Kibithu is a real place and it genuinely is India's easternmost point on the mainland, but it lies in the Anjaw district of Arunachal Pradesh, not Assam. The village sits in the Mishmi Hills near the trijunction of India, China and Myanmar, close to where the Lohit river enters Indian territory, and it is administered from the district headquarters at Hawai — all of that is Arunachal Pradesh geography, roughly 70 km from Hawai and only about 15 km from the Line of Actual Control. Assam borders Arunachal Pradesh to its south and shares a long and often-discussed foothill boundary with it, which is exactly the kind of neighbouring-state confusion this question is built to catch: a candidate who correctly remembers 'Kibithu is the easternmost point' but loosely files the north-eastern hill states together as one block will read past the word 'Assam' without noticing it is wrong. The other three statements survive scrutiny. Kanniyakumari in Tamil Nadu is the accepted southern tip of mainland India (distinct from Indira Point on Great Nicobar Island, which is the southernmost point of Indian territory as a whole, not of the mainland). Guhar Moti, near Narayan Sarovar in Kutch district, Gujarat, is the accepted western tip. The northern tip is conventionally given as Indira Col, a mountain pass in the Karakoram range in Ladakh near the Siachen Glacier — the paper's 'Defdar in Ladakh' names the same north Ladakh, Siachen-adjacent frontier that Indira Col occupies, and since the state given (Ladakh) is the one every standard reference agrees on, this card treats the state attribution in option (1) as correct along with the other two, leaving Kibithu-in-Assam as the one statement a careful reading finds false.

• (1)The Northern tip of main land India is Defdar in Ladakh. — Not the false statement — the Union Territory named is correct. India's conventional northernmost point, Indira Col, is a Karakoram mountain pass in the Siachen Glacier sector of Ladakh, close to the trijunction with Pakistan and China, and this option's state attribution matches every standard reference on the point. A candidate scanning for an error in an unfamiliar-sounding name can be tempted to mark this one, but the question turns on a state mismatch elsewhere, not on this line.
• (2)The Southern tip of main land India is Kanniyakumari in Tamil Nadu. — Not the false statement — this is the standard, uncontested fact. Kanniyakumari, also called Cape Comorin, at the confluence of the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, is universally cited as the southern tip of the Indian mainland. It is worth keeping distinct from Indira Point on Great Nicobar Island, which is the southernmost point of India's territory overall — but the question specifically asks about the mainland, and on that qualifier this statement is exactly right, so it cannot be the false one the question is asking for.
• (4)The Western tip of main land India is Ghuar mota in Gujarat. — Not the false statement — Guhar Moti (also spelt Ghuar Mota), near Narayan Sarovar in the Kutch district of Gujarat, is the standard western extremity of the Indian mainland, close to the Pakistan border in the Rann of Kutch. The state and the location both check out against every reference on India's extreme points, so this line offers no error for the question to hinge on.

India's four extreme points on the mainland are a fixed set of facts tested repeatedly across state and central services exams: Indira Col (Ladakh, Karakoram range) in the north, Guhar Moti near Narayan Sarovar (Kutch, Gujarat) in the west, Kanniyakumari (Tamil Nadu) in the south, and Kibithu (Anjaw district, Arunachal Pradesh) in the east. A second, related set — the extreme points of Indian territory as a whole rather than the mainland alone — swaps in Indira Point on Great Nicobar Island for the south, since it lies further south than Kanniyakumari once the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are counted. Keeping 'mainland' and 'territory' as two different lists, each with its own southern point, is the single most useful distinction to carry out of this topic.

MPSC and UPSC both like this fact set because it can be tested as plain recall or, as here, disguised as an error-spotting exercise where every option sounds equally plausible unless the state names are checked one by one. The trap in this particular item is geographic proximity: Arunachal Pradesh and Assam sit next to each other in the north-east, and a candidate who has correctly memorised 'Kibithu is the easternmost point' but has not separately drilled which specific state it sits in is exposed exactly here. The lesson generalises well beyond this question — wherever a paper pairs a place name with a state, treat the state as a second fact to verify, not a formality that comes automatically with the place.

• Northernmost point of mainland India: Indira Col, a pass in the Karakoram range, Ladakh, near the Siachen Glacier.
• Westernmost point of mainland India: Guhar Moti (Ghuar Mota), near Narayan Sarovar, Kutch district, Gujarat.
• Southernmost point of mainland India: Kanniyakumari (Cape Comorin), Tamil Nadu — where the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean meet.
• Easternmost point of mainland India: Kibithu, Anjaw district, Arunachal Pradesh — not Assam — near the India–China–Myanmar trijunction.
• Indira Point on Great Nicobar Island, not Kanniyakumari, is the southernmost point of India's territory as a whole, once the island territories are included.

• Assuming a border town's state follows automatically from its region — Arunachal Pradesh and Assam are adjacent, and a place correctly linked to 'the north-east' can still be misassigned to the wrong specific state
• Confusing the southernmost point of the mainland (Kanniyakumari) with the southernmost point of Indian territory overall (Indira Point, Great Nicobar Island)
• Treating 'which statement is false' items as a search for an obviously wrong fact, when the actual error is often a single correct-sounding but swapped detail — here, the state name

MPSC's Paper-I geography section returns to India's extreme points across editions, usually either as direct recall ('what is the westernmost point of India?') or, as in this item, as a false-statement identification where three correct facts are mixed with one that has a single wrong detail. The safest preparation is to hold the four mainland points and their four states as a fixed table, and separately note the Indira Point exception for territory-wide questions, since examiners use exactly that mainland-versus-territory gap to build both straightforward and disguised versions of the same question.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Kibithu, India's easternmost point on the mainland, lies in which district and state ?

  • (a)Anjaw district, Arunachal Pradesh
  • (b)Tirap district, Arunachal Pradesh
  • (c)Dibrugarh district, Assam
  • (d)Changlang district, Arunachal Pradesh

  Answer(a) Anjaw district, Arunachal Pradesh — Kibithu sits in Anjaw district near the India–China–Myanmar trijunction, roughly 70 km from the district headquarters at Hawai, and close to where the Lohit river enters India. It is not in Assam, and not in Tirap or Changlang districts, which lie further south-west in Arunachal Pradesh.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following is the southernmost point of India's territory as a whole, as distinct from the southernmost point of the mainland ?

  • (a)Kanniyakumari, Tamil Nadu
  • (b)Indira Point, Great Nicobar Island
  • (c)Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu
  • (d)Minicoy Island, Lakshadweep

  Answer(b) Indira Point, Great Nicobar Island — once the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are counted as part of Indian territory, Indira Point lies further south than Kanniyakumari, which remains only the southernmost point of the mainland.