MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 27 of 100

Correct — option (2), '(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (i)'. The four figures in List-II are a strictly decreasing set — 35.94, 30.4, 27.33, 25.50 — so the question is not really about decimals at all. It asks the candidate to rank four districts by how fast their population grew between the Censuses of 2001 and 2011, and then to read the ranking off the list. The ranking is Thane first, Pune second, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar third and Nandurbar fourth, which assigns Thane item (iv), Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar item (iii), Pune item (ii) and Nandurbar item (i) — precisely option (2). The reasoning behind the ranking is migration. Thane recorded the fastest decadal growth of any district in Maharashtra in that decade, because it absorbed the outward spread of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region: Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayandar, Vasai-Virar, Ulhasnagar and Navi Mumbai all lay within the undivided Thane district of 2011, and the housing that Mumbai City could no longer supply was built there. Pune comes next, pulled by its information technology and automobile industries and by the Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial belt. Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, then Aurangabad, is Marathwada's industrial and administrative anchor and grew fast for its region but not at metropolitan rates. Nandurbar, a predominantly tribal district in the far north-west, has no comparable in-migration; its growth comes from natural increase, and it is a district people leave rather than one they arrive in. One number is worth holding beside these: Maharashtra as a whole grew by 15.99 per cent in the same decade. Every one of the four districts here is well above the state average, so 'lowest of the four' does not mean slow — the state contains districts that actually lost population over the decade, Mumbai City, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg among them. Anchor on Thane taking the highest value and three of the four options fall immediately.

• (1)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — Gives Thane the lowest figure of the four, 25.50, and hands the highest, 35.94, to Pune. That inverts the decade's most conspicuous demographic fact: the growth of Thane district was driven by the spillover of Mumbai's population into Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayandar, Vasai-Virar and Navi Mumbai, all of which were inside the undivided Thane district at the 2011 Census. It also places Nandurbar, a district of net out-migration, above Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
• (3)(a) - (ii), (b) - (i), (c) - (iv), (d) - (iii) — Puts Pune first at 35.94 and Thane second at 30.4 — the right two districts at the top but in the wrong order — and then compounds it by ranking Nandurbar above Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. This is the most attractive of the wrong options because a candidate who knows only that 'Pune and Thane grew fastest' will find it consistent with that memory. Separating the two requires the specific fact that Thane, not Pune, led every district in the state.
• (4)(a) - (iii), (b) - (iv), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii) — Assigns the highest growth to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and the lowest to Pune, which reverses the metropolitan pull that drives the whole ranking, and makes Nandurbar the second-fastest growing of the four at 30.4. Nothing in the demography of the decade supports a Marathwada district outgrowing both Mumbai's suburban belt and the Pune-Pimpri industrial region, and a candidate who checks the single anchor — that Thane took the highest figure — rejects this option without needing to know any other pairing.

Decadal growth of population is the percentage change between two successive censuses, and it is made of exactly two things: natural increase, which is births minus deaths, and net migration, which is in-migrants minus out-migrants. A district's growth rate cannot be read as a statement about its fertility, because migration usually dominates at the district level even where it barely matters at the state level. That is why an industrial or metropolitan district can grow at twice the state rate while its own birth rate is falling, and why a poor district with high fertility can grow slowly, or even lose population, if enough working-age people leave. Maharashtra's 2001-2011 map shows both mechanisms at once: the fastest growth in the districts around Mumbai and Pune, where migration piles on top of natural increase; moderate growth in regional centres; and outright decline in Mumbai City, whose old wards were emptying as households moved outward, and in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg, the Konkan districts with the longest tradition of out-migration to Mumbai.

Two cautions are worth attaching to any district-level figure from the 2011 Census. First, the district map has changed since: Palghar was carved out of Thane in 2014, so the Thane of the 2011 Census is not the Thane of today, and figures for the two are not comparable without adjustment. Aurangabad district and city were renamed Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar in 2023, so the same unit appears under two names in different sources. Second, the exact decimals in circulation differ slightly between compilations, because published tables are derived at different levels of rounding and revision. The Commission's own List-II is what governs in this question, and in any case the match is decided by ranking rather than by decimals — which is the practical lesson, since a candidate is far more likely to remember that Thane led the state than to remember whether the figure was 35.94 or 36.01.

• Maharashtra's decadal population growth in 2001-2011 was 15.99 per cent, well below the national figure for the same decade. All four districts in this question grew faster than the state as a whole, so the slowest of the four is still a fast-growing district by Maharashtra standards.
• Thane recorded the highest decadal growth of any district in Maharashtra in 2001-2011 and was also the state's most populous district at the 2011 Census. Its growth came from the outward spread of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region into Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayandar, Vasai-Virar, Ulhasnagar and Navi Mumbai.
• Three Maharashtra districts recorded negative decadal growth in 2001-2011 — Mumbai City, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg. Mumbai City lost people to its own suburbs and to Thane, while the two Konkan districts continued a long-standing pattern of out-migration towards Mumbai.
• Palghar district was carved out of Thane district in 2014, three years after the Census. Comparisons of Thane's population across 2011 and later years are therefore comparisons of two different territories unless the figures are explicitly reconstituted.
• Nandurbar, itself carved out of Dhule district in 1998, is a predominantly Scheduled Tribe district of north-west Maharashtra. Its population growth is driven by natural increase rather than in-migration, and the district is a source of seasonal labour migration rather than a destination.

• Assuming the district with the lowest growth in a set is a slow-growing district. All four here exceed the state average of 15.99 per cent; the genuinely slow districts of Maharashtra in that decade were the ones that lost population outright.
• Reading a high decadal growth rate as evidence of high fertility. At district level the figure is usually dominated by migration, which is why Thane led the state while its birth rate was nothing exceptional, and why Nandurbar's higher fertility does not put it at the top.
• Comparing district figures across a reorganisation. Thane in the 2011 Census included the area that became Palghar district in 2014, and Aurangabad and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar are the same district under two names — a source that mixes the two conventions will appear to contradict itself.

Census-based questions in MPSC Paper-I come in three shapes. The first is a straight superlative: which district is highest or lowest in population, density, growth, sex ratio or literacy — answerable from a short table of extremes rather than from the full district list. The second is the ranking match used here, where four districts are set against four values; it is always solved by ordering the districts first and reading the values afterwards, never by trying to recall a decimal. The third is a two-statement or assertion-reason item on the reason behind a figure, where the expected answer distinguishes migration from natural increase. Prepare by memorising the state totals and the top and bottom three districts on each measure, and by holding one causal sentence for each extreme.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to Census 2011, which district of Maharashtra recorded the highest decadal population growth during 2001-2011 ?

  • (a)Pune
  • (b)Thane
  • (c)Nashik
  • (d)Nagpur

  Answer(b) Thane — the district absorbed the outward spread of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, including Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayandar, Vasai-Virar and Navi Mumbai, all of which lay within the undivided Thane district at the 2011 Census. Pune grew fast on the strength of its industrial and IT belt but did not match Thane's rate, and Palghar was carved out of Thane only in 2014.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  As per Census 2011, the decadal growth rate of population of Maharashtra during 2001-2011 was about :

  • (a)9.42 per cent
  • (b)15.99 per cent
  • (c)22.73 per cent
  • (d)25.35 per cent

  Answer(b) 15.99 per cent — the state's growth for the decade, and the benchmark against which any district figure should be read. Districts around Mumbai and Pune grew at roughly twice this rate, while Mumbai City, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg actually lost population over the same decade.