MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 24 of 100

Correct — option (1), '(a) - (iv), (b) - (i), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iii)'. This is Sir Sidney Burrard's fourfold longitudinal division of the Himalaya, which cuts the range not by altitude but by the great transverse river valleys, each of which breaks the mountain wall and provides a natural boundary. Read from west to east, the boundary rivers are the Indus, the Sutlej, the Kali, the Tista and the Dihang or Brahmaputra, and the four sectors between them are: the Punjab Himalaya from the Indus to the Sutlej, roughly 560 km, covering Ladakh, Kashmir and Himachal, so statement (a) takes item (iv); the Kumaon Himalaya from the Sutlej to the Kali, roughly 320 km, the shortest of the four and corresponding to present-day Uttarakhand with its Garhwal and Kumaon halves, so statement (b) takes item (i); the Nepal Himalaya from the Kali to the Tista, roughly 800 km, the longest sector and the one carrying the greatest peaks including Everest, Kanchenjunga, Makalu, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, so statement (c) takes item (ii); and the Assam Himalaya from the Tista to the Dihang or Brahmaputra, roughly 720 km, spanning Bhutan, Sikkim's eastern edge and Arunachal Pradesh, so statement (d) takes item (iii). The single fact that unlocks the whole match is that List-I is printed in west-to-east order while List-II is deliberately not: item (iv), 'Indus to Sutlej', is printed last but belongs to the westernmost sector. Anchor on the Kali, which is the India–Nepal boundary river — the sector named after Nepal must be the one that begins at the Kali — and the rest falls out mechanically. Only option (1) carries that assignment.

• (2)(a) - (ii), (b) - (iii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (i) — Rotates the sequence by one place, so every sector is displaced eastward. It puts the Punjab Himalaya between the Kali and the Tista, which is Nepal, and the Nepal Himalaya between the Indus and the Sutlej, which is Kashmir and Himachal — geographically impossible on the Kali test alone, since the Kali is the India–Nepal boundary river and the Nepal sector must begin there. It also strands the Assam Himalaya between the Sutlej and the Kali, in Uttarakhand, some 1,500 km from Assam.
• (3)(a) - (iii), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (i) — Places the Punjab Himalaya between the Tista and the Brahmaputra, that is in Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal, and the Nepal Himalaya between the Indus and the Sutlej in the far west — a near-complete inversion of the west-east order. It happens to get the Kumaon Himalaya wrong too, assigning it the Kali–Tista stretch that belongs to Nepal. A candidate arrives here by matching on nothing more than the printed sequence of List-II, without asking where each boundary river actually flows.
• (4)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (iv) — The straight-through mapping — (a) to (i), (b) to (ii), (c) to (iii), (d) to (iv) — which assumes List-II has been printed in the same order as List-I. It has not: List-II opens with 'Sutlej to Kali' and closes with 'Indus to Sutlej', so the westernmost extension sits in the last position. This option gives the Punjab Himalaya the Sutlej–Kali stretch, which is Uttarakhand, and hands the Assam Himalaya the Indus–Sutlej stretch in Ladakh. A one-to-one option that runs down the diagonal is worth a moment's suspicion in any matching question, and here checking a single pair against the map is enough to reject it.

The Himalaya is divided in two independent ways, and confusing them is the commonest error in this topic. The first division is transverse — parallel ranges running the length of the mountain from north to south: the Trans-Himalaya (Karakoram, Ladakh, Zaskar and Kailash ranges), the Greater Himalaya or Himadri carrying the highest peaks and the perpetual snowline, the Lesser or Middle Himalaya (Pir Panjal, Dhauladhar, Nag Tibba, Mussoorie and Mahabharat ranges) holding the hill stations and the valleys of Kashmir and Kangra, and the Outer Himalaya or Shiwaliks, the youngest and lowest belt, enclosing the flat-floored duns such as Dehra Dun. The second division, which this question uses, is longitudinal — the mountain sliced from west to east into regional sectors at the points where great rivers cut through it. Burrard's four sectors, Punjab, Kumaon, Nepal and Assam, are defined entirely by those cuts, and the boundary rivers are chosen because each is antecedent: it was flowing before the mountains rose to their present height and has kept its course by cutting down as fast as the land rose, which is why the Indus, Sutlej and Brahmaputra all rise north of the Greater Himalaya and pass straight through it in deep gorges.

Burrard's division survives in textbooks because it maps onto administration and onto climate. Each sector has a distinct rainfall regime — the eastern sectors receive far heavier monsoon rain, which is why the snowline falls lower in the west despite the west being drier, and why Himalayan vegetation belts sit at different heights at the two ends of the range. The names are historical rather than political: the 'Punjab Himalaya' predates the reorganisation of that region and covers ground now in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, while the 'Kumaon Himalaya' covers the whole of present-day Uttarakhand, Garhwal included. A candidate who tries to force the four names onto today's states will get the boundaries wrong; the rivers are the only reliable anchors. The examiner exploits exactly this by printing List-II out of order so that the diagonal answer is wrong. One further clarification is worth carrying: these four names are not ranges. The 'Punjab Himalaya' is a slice of the entire mountain wall between two rivers — Shiwaliks, Lesser Himalaya and Greater Himalaya all included — and the same is true of the other three, which is why a sector and a range can never be answers to the same question.

• Punjab Himalaya — from the Indus to the Sutlej, about 560 km. It is also encountered under the names Kashmir Himalaya and Himachal Himalaya, and it contains the Kashmir valley, the Pir Panjal and Dhauladhar ranges and the Karewa lake deposits, along with the passes of Zoji La, Banihal, Photu La and Rohtang.
• Kumaon Himalaya — from the Sutlej to the Kali, about 320 km and the shortest sector, corresponding to Uttarakhand. Nanda Devi at 7,816 m, the highest peak lying entirely within India, stands here, along with Kamet, Trishul, Badrinath and Kedarnath, and the Gangotri and Yamunotri sources.
• Nepal Himalaya — from the Kali to the Tista, about 800 km and the longest sector, carrying Mount Everest (8,848.86 m), Kanchenjunga (8,586 m, the highest peak in India, on the Sikkim–Nepal border), Makalu, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri.
• Assam Himalaya — from the Tista to the Dihang or Brahmaputra, about 720 km, covering Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh. Its eastern end is where the Brahmaputra turns through the Dihang gorge around Namcha Barwa and enters India.
• The boundary rivers are antecedent — the Indus, Sutlej and Brahmaputra rise on the Tibetan side of the Greater Himalaya and cut through it in gorges, showing that they were in place before the range attained its present elevation. The Kali (also called the Sharda or Mahakali) forms much of the India–Nepal boundary.

• Mixing the longitudinal sectors (Punjab, Kumaon, Nepal, Assam) with the transverse ranges (Trans-Himalaya, Himadri, Himachal, Shiwaliks). They are two different cuts through the same mountain, and an option that names a range where a sector is expected, or the reverse, is testing exactly this confusion.
• Assuming a matching question's List-II is printed in the same order as List-I. Here it is not — the westernmost extension, 'Indus to Sutlej', appears last — so the straight diagonal option is deliberately wrong, and any diagonal option in a match deserves a check before it is trusted.
• Placing Kanchenjunga and Nanda Devi in the wrong sector. Kanchenjunga is on the Sikkim–Nepal border and so falls in the Nepal Himalaya sector even though it is India's highest peak; Nanda Devi lies in the Kumaon sector and is the highest peak entirely inside Indian territory.

Himalayan regional geography reaches the Commission in four regular shapes. First, the sector-to-river match used here, which always turns on knowing the west-to-east order of the boundary rivers. Second, peak-to-sector or peak-to-state placement, where Kanchenjunga, Nanda Devi and Namcha Barwa do most of the work. Third, pass-to-state or pass-to-route questions, which are pure recall and reward a table. Fourth, the process question — antecedent drainage, the Shiwalik duns, the Bhabar and Terai — which needs an explanation rather than a list. Build the river order Indus, Sutlej, Kali, Tista, Dihang first: it answers the first shape outright and constrains the second, because a peak can then be located by asking which two rivers it lies between.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the fourfold regional division of the Himalaya, which river forms the boundary between the Kumaon Himalaya and the Nepal Himalaya ?

  • (a)Sutlej
  • (b)Kali
  • (c)Tista
  • (d)Ghaghara

  Answer(b) Kali — also called the Sharda or Mahakali, it forms much of the India–Nepal boundary and therefore separates the Kumaon sector, which runs from the Sutlej to the Kali, from the Nepal sector, which runs from the Kali to the Tista. The Sutlej is the western boundary of Kumaon and the Tista the eastern boundary of Nepal.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Nanda Devi, the highest peak lying wholly within Indian territory, belongs to which regional division of the Himalaya ?

  • (a)Punjab Himalaya
  • (b)Kumaon Himalaya
  • (c)Nepal Himalaya
  • (d)Assam Himalaya

  Answer(b) Kumaon Himalaya — Nanda Devi (7,816 m) stands in Uttarakhand, between the Sutlej and the Kali, which is the Kumaon sector. Kanchenjunga is higher and is India's highest peak, but it sits on the Sikkim–Nepal border and so falls in the Nepal Himalaya sector, which is the distinction the question is built on.