MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 19 of 100

Correct — option (4), statements (b), (c) and (d). Begin with the falsehood, because it does most of the work. Statement (a) inverts the single best-known fact about the Aravalli: it is one of the oldest fold mountain systems in the world, not one of the youngest. The range is of Precambrian age, folded and refolded and then worn down over so long a span that what survives is a line of residual ridges rarely rising above a thousand metres, with Guru Shikhar on Mount Abu at about 1,722 metres as its highest point — the antithesis of a young mountain like the Himalaya, which is still rising and still sharp. Rejecting statement (a) removes options (1) and (2) together, since both contain it, and the question is immediately halved. What remains is a choice between (3) and (4), and they differ by exactly one statement, (d). Statement (b) is plainly true: the Aravalli belt carries the marble of Makrana and Rajsamand, granite, the zinc and lead of Zawar and the copper of the Khetri belt, and it is among the most mineralised tracts in northern India. Statement (c) follows from (b) and from the archaeological record — Zawar and Khetri were worked in pre-modern times, and the stone of the range built the forts, temples and cities of Rajasthan over many centuries. Statement (d) is also true: Chittorgarh and Kumbhalgarh stand on Aravalli hills in Rajasthan, and Ranthambore sits at the eastern end of the system, where the Aravalli meets the Vindhyan country — a junction that makes Ranthambore the one name in the list a careful candidate may pause over, though the Commission's final key counts the statement as correct. Three statements standing and one falling gives option (4).

• (1)Only statement (a) is correct. — The exact inversion of the truth: it accepts the one false statement and rejects all three true ones. The Aravalli is among the oldest fold mountain systems on earth, of Precambrian age, worn down to residual ridges by an immense span of erosion, and this is the fact by which the range is introduced in every textbook treatment. It is also the reason the range is contrasted with the Himalaya in comparative questions — young, high, still rising, still seismically active. A candidate who marks this option has read 'fold mountain' and supplied the Himalayan association automatically, which is precisely the reflex the statement was written to catch.
• (2)Statements (a) and (b) are correct. — Correctly accepts the mineral wealth of the range but keeps the false claim about its age, and one false statement is enough to sink a bundle. This is the option for a candidate who reads the statements for plausibility rather than for truth: marble, granite, zinc and copper are so obviously right that the eye moves on, and the age claim slips through unexamined. The discipline that prevents it is to test the statement carrying the strongest word first — here 'youngest', an absolute-flavoured claim of exactly the kind an examiner plants — before confirming the statements that merely sound reasonable.
• (3)Statements (b) and (c) are correct. — The serious distractor, and the one that separates the last two options. It gets the falsification right, dropping the age claim, and accepts the mineral wealth and the long history of mining and construction — but it also drops statement (d), which is true. Chittorgarh and Kumbhalgarh stand on Aravalli hills, and Ranthambore lies at the eastern end of the system where the Aravalli meets the Vindhyan country; all three belong to the group of Rajasthan hill forts inscribed as a World Heritage site. A candidate arrives here by hesitating over Ranthambore's position at a geological junction and discarding the whole statement on the strength of that hesitation.

The Aravalli is the oldest of India's mountain systems and the clearest illustration in the syllabus of what deep time does to a range. Formed in the Precambrian and folded long before the Himalaya existed, it has been eroded almost to its roots, so that what remains is a north-east to south-west line of ridges running roughly 670 kilometres from the neighbourhood of Delhi through Haryana and Rajasthan into Gujarat, broken into discontinuous blocks and rising to Guru Shikhar on Mount Abu at about 1,722 metres. Its significance for India's geography is fourfold. It is a mineral province, carrying marble at Makrana and Rajsamand, zinc and lead at Zawar, copper in the Khetri belt, and granite and building stone along its length. It is a watershed, giving rise to the Banas, the Luni and the Sabarmati and separating the drainage of the plains from that of the desert margin. It is an ecological barrier, the line that has historically checked the eastward advance of sand from the Thar. And it is a cultural landscape, its defensible hills carrying the forts of the Rajput states and its stone built into their temples and palaces — a combination of mineral wealth, defensibility and long settlement that makes it a favourite subject for statement-bundle questions.

The reasoning to practise here is falsify first. In a four-statement bundle, look for the statement most likely to have been planted as the error, and the reliable signal is a superlative or a comparative — oldest, youngest, largest, first, only. Statement (a) carries 'youngest', so it should be the first thing tested, and testing it removes half the options at once. That ordering matters on a paper allowing about seventy-two seconds a question: verifying four statements takes four times as long as disproving one. After the elimination, the item reduces to a single yes-or-no about the forts, which is a question of geography rather than of history — do these three fortresses stand in the Aravalli system? Chittorgarh and Kumbhalgarh unambiguously do; Ranthambore sits at the eastern end where the Aravalli meets the Vindhyan country, and a well-read candidate may pause there. Where a statement is defensible on the standard reading but carries a genuine nuance, the disciplined move is to accept the standard reading, which is what the Commission's final key does here — and, importantly, to notice that the alternative would require rejecting a statement rather than merely doubting it.

• The Aravalli is one of the oldest fold mountain systems in the world, of Precambrian age, and has been eroded to a line of residual ridges — the opposite of the young, high and still-rising Himalaya with which it is usually contrasted.
• The range runs roughly 670 kilometres north-east to south-west, from the neighbourhood of Delhi through Haryana and Rajasthan into Gujarat, and its highest point is Guru Shikhar on Mount Abu at about 1,722 metres.
• Its mineral wealth includes the marble of Makrana and Rajsamand, granite and building stone, the zinc and lead of Zawar and the copper of the Khetri belt, several of which were worked in pre-modern times.
• The Banas, the Luni and the Sabarmati rise in the Aravalli, and the range acts as a barrier checking the eastward spread of sand from the Thar desert into the plains.
• Chittorgarh and Kumbhalgarh stand on Aravalli hills, and Ranthambore lies at the eastern end of the system where the Aravalli meets the Vindhyan country; all three belong to the group of Rajasthan hill forts inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

• Reading 'fold mountain' and supplying the Himalayan association automatically; the Aravalli is a fold mountain of Precambrian age and is one of the oldest, not the youngest, in the world
• Verifying the statements you find plausible before testing the one carrying a superlative — in a bundle, the word 'oldest', 'youngest', 'largest' or 'only' marks the statement most likely to have been planted
• Rejecting a whole statement because one of its examples carries a nuance: Ranthambore's position at the Aravalli-Vindhyan junction is a real complication, but doubt is not disproof
• Forgetting that eliminating one false statement can remove two options at once when that statement appears in both, which is the fastest saving available on a bundle item

MPSC's physical geography questions are usually four-statement bundles about a named feature — a range, a river system, a soil type — in which one statement is a planted inversion and the rest are true. The inversion is nearly always signalled by a superlative, so the technique generalises far beyond this question. UPSC treats the same feature through consequence and process: what the Aravalli does to the movement of sand and moisture, why a Precambrian range has the mineral suite it does, what the ecological effects of quarrying are. So a candidate preparing both should carry, for each major landform, its age and origin, one line on its economic significance and one on its ecological role — the first answers MPSC's inversions, the second and third answer UPSC's process questions, and all three together are a single short note.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The highest peak of the Aravalli range, rising to about 1,722 metres, is situated at which of the following places ?

  • (a)Mount Abu
  • (b)Chittorgarh
  • (c)Kumbhalgarh
  • (d)Khetri

  Answer(a) Mount Abu — Guru Shikhar on Mount Abu in Sirohi district is the highest point of the Aravalli system. Chittorgarh and Kumbhalgarh are fort sites on Aravalli hills rather than summits of the range, and Khetri is the copper-mining belt of Jhunjhunu district, so all four are genuine Aravalli locations and the question turns on which one is the high point.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following pairs of mineral and location in the Aravalli belt is correctly matched ?

  • (a)Zawar — copper
  • (b)Khetri — marble
  • (c)Makrana — marble
  • (d)Rajsamand — zinc

  Answer(c) Makrana — marble. Makrana in Nagaur district is the classic marble source of the Aravalli belt, with Rajsamand another major marble district. Zawar in Udaipur district is worked for zinc and lead rather than copper, and Khetri in Jhunjhunu district is the copper belt, so the other three pairs each attach the right place to the wrong mineral.