MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 91 of 100

Correct — option (1), Kushavati. Goa has had two districts since it became a State, North Goa and South Goa, and at the end of 2025 the Chief Minister, Pramod Sawant, announced that a third district would be carved out of South Goa and named Kushavati, after the ancient river that runs through the region. The proposed district is to be made up of four talukas presently in South Goa — Dharbandora, Quepem, Sanguem and Canacona — with the town of Quepem as its headquarters, and administration was to continue from South Goa until the new district's own offices were ready. The option list is the whole point of this question, and it is unusually well built. Three of the four choices — Cana Cona, Dharbandora and Sanguem — are talukas that will go into the new district. They are its constituents, not its name. The fourth taluka, Quepem, which is to be the headquarters, is not offered at all. So a candidate who has read only that 'the new Goa district will include Sanguem and Canacona' has exactly the wrong information to answer with, and will pick a component in place of the name. The name itself is the discriminator, and it comes from a different category altogether: Kushavati is a river, not a taluka. That is a common convention in Indian district naming — new districts are frequently named after a river, a hill or a historical site rather than after their largest town, precisely so that no constituent taluka appears to have been favoured over the others. If you recognise that the question is asking for a name and that three of the four options are places inside the unit being named, the reasoning finishes itself. One point of administrative law is worth attaching here, because it is often examined alongside: creating a new district inside a State is a decision of the State government under State law. It needs no Act of Parliament and no constitutional amendment, unlike the creation of a new State, which Parliament does under Articles 2 and 3.

• (2)Cana Cona — Canacona is one of the four South Goa talukas being placed in the new district, not the district's name. It lies at Goa's southern end, adjoining Karnataka, and is best known for its beaches and for the Cotigao wildlife sanctuary. Picking it means naming the whole after one of its parts.
• (3)Dharbandora — Dharbandora is likewise a constituent taluka of the proposed district — one of Goa's more recently constituted talukas, in the interior of South Goa. It is a plausible-looking answer for a candidate who remembers the news item as a list of unfamiliar Goan place names and picks the least familiar of them, but the announcement named the district after a river, not after any taluka.
• (4)Sanguem — Sanguem is the largest of the talukas going into the new district by area, and it is the taluka through which the Kushavati river itself flows — the prehistoric rock engravings at Usgalimal stand on that river's bank in Sanguem. That makes it the most tempting wrong answer of the three, because it is genuinely connected to the name. But the district is named for the river, not for the taluka the river passes through.

Goa is India's smallest State by area. It was under Portuguese rule until December 1961, then administered as the Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu, and became a full State in 1987 with Panaji as its capital, Daman and Diu remaining a separate Union Territory. Its administrative division has been unusually stable: two districts, North Goa with its headquarters at Panaji and South Goa with its headquarters at Margao, subdivided into talukas. A third district would be the first change to that structure since statehood. The proposal takes four talukas out of South Goa — Dharbandora, Quepem, Sanguem and Canacona — which are the State's interior and southern talukas, less urbanised and less served than the coastal belt, and the stated intention was that the new district would also be treated as an aspirational district for the purpose of central funding.

Districts in India are created, merged and renamed by State governments, and the reasons are almost always administrative reach — a district that is too large or too thinly connected makes the Collector's office remote from the people it serves. That is why a district creation is announced by a Chief Minister and not legislated by Parliament, and why the number of districts in India rises steadily without any constitutional consequence. The naming convention on display here is worth carrying: the Kushavati river gives the district a name that belongs to all four talukas rather than to one of them. The river has its own significance for Konkan archaeology — the rock engravings at Usgalimal, also called Pansaimol, are cut into laterite on its bank in Sanguem taluka, and they were put on UNESCO's tentative list of World Heritage Sites together with eight sites in Maharashtra as the 'Geoglyphs of the Konkan Region of India', which makes this a Goa question with a direct Maharashtra connection.

• Goa's proposed third district is to be named Kushavati, after the river of that name, and was announced by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant at the end of 2025
• It is to be carved out of South Goa from four talukas — Dharbandora, Quepem, Sanguem and Canacona — with Quepem town as the district headquarters
• Goa has had only two districts, North Goa (headquarters Panaji) and South Goa (headquarters Margao), since it became a State in 1987
• Creating a district within a State is a State government decision under State law; only the creation or alteration of States requires Parliament, under Articles 2 and 3
• The Kushavati river carries the Usgalimal or Pansaimol rock engravings on its bank in Sanguem taluka, which are on UNESCO's tentative list along with eight Maharashtra sites as the 'Geoglyphs of the Konkan Region of India'

• Naming a district after one of its constituent talukas. Three of the four options here are talukas being merged into the new unit, and only one is the name that was actually announced
• Assuming that creating a district needs parliamentary approval. It does not — that requirement attaches to creating or altering States, and confusing the two levels is a standard polity error
• Reading Goa as having always had two districts by some constitutional rule. The number is administrative and changeable; what has been stable is the practice, not the law

State-level administrative changes are dependable current-affairs material because they are announced, dated and easy to key. The recurring forms are: the name of a newly created district or State capital; how many districts a State now has; and which existing units a new district was carved from. The distractor pattern seen here — offering the components in place of the name — recurs across State PSC papers, so when a question asks for a name and the options look like a list of neighbouring places, suspect that the answer belongs to a different category, such as a river, a hill or a historical figure.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The proposed Kushavati district of Goa is to be carved out of which existing district ?

  • (a)North Goa
  • (b)South Goa
  • (c)Both North Goa and South Goa
  • (d)It is to be formed from territory transferred from Karnataka

  Answer(b) South Goa — the four talukas named in the proposal, Dharbandora, Quepem, Sanguem and Canacona, are all presently part of South Goa district, with Quepem town to serve as the new headquarters.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The creation of a new district within an Indian State requires :

  • (a)an Act of Parliament under Article 3 of the Constitution
  • (b)a constitutional amendment ratified by half the States
  • (c)a decision of the State government under the relevant State law
  • (d)the prior approval of the Election Commission of India

  Answer(c) a decision of the State government under the relevant State law — districts are administrative units of a State and are created, merged or renamed by the State government. Articles 2 and 3, which involve Parliament, govern the admission, establishment and alteration of States, not of districts.