MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 19 of 100

Correct — option (3). Four states stand in one column and four sanctuaries in the other, printed side by side for convenience only, and the pairing has to be built from what is known of each sanctuary. Begin with the one a candidate for this Commission cannot afford to miss. Radhanagari at (i) is in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra, at the southern end of the Sahyadri; it was notified in 1958, as the Dajipur sanctuary, and is the oldest wildlife sanctuary in the state, celebrated for its population of Indian gaur and included in the Western Ghats area recognised as a World Heritage Site. So Maharashtra at (b) takes (i), and that removes two of the four rows at once. Pulicat at (iii) is the great brackish lagoon on the Coromandel coast, second in size among Indian lagoons only to Chilika and separated from the Bay of Bengal by the long island of Sriharikota; the lagoon lies across the boundary of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and the bird sanctuary on it, famous for its flamingos and pelicans, is placed here with Andhra Pradesh at (a). Jaldapara at (iv) lies in the Duars of northern West Bengal, on the Torsa river in Alipurduar district, and is one of the strongholds of the great one-horned rhinoceros outside Assam; it was long a sanctuary and was raised to the status of a national park in 2012, so West Bengal at (c) takes (iv). Bhagwan Mahavir at (ii) is the largest protected area in Goa, in the Western Ghats on the Karnataka border, enclosing the Mollem national park and the Dudhsagar falls, so Goa at (d) takes (ii). The completed pairing is (a)-(iii), (b)-(i), (c)-(iv), (d)-(ii), which is option (3).

• (1)(a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (i), (d) - (ii) — This row gets only the Goa pairing right and misplaces the other three: it sends Jaldapara to Andhra Pradesh, Pulicat to Maharashtra and Radhanagari to West Bengal. The last of these is the one a candidate preparing for this Commission should catch instantly, since Radhanagari is a Maharashtra sanctuary and the oldest in the state. The row is worth a moment's study because of how it is built — it keeps one true pair, the one most candidates are least sure of, and shuffles the three that a prepared candidate would know. A row of that construction rewards the candidate who tests the pairs he is confident about first and eliminates on them, and punishes the one who begins with the pair he is least certain of and then reads the rest of the row charitably because its first test succeeded.
• (2)(a) - (i), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iii), (d) - (iv) — This row takes the two printed lists straight down in their printed order, giving Andhra Pradesh to Radhanagari, Maharashtra to Bhagwan Mahavir, West Bengal to Pulicat and Goa to Jaldapara, and every pair is wrong. It is the row the layout invites, because two columns standing next to each other on the page make the eye read across, and a row that preserves that reading feels natural. The check that disposes of it is the same as before: Radhanagari belongs to Maharashtra and not to Andhra Pradesh, and Bhagwan Mahavir belongs to Goa and not to Maharashtra, so the row fails twice in its first two entries. Adjacency in a matching question is layout and never an answer, and a row that simply reproduces the printed order deserves more suspicion than any other.
• (4)(a) - (iii), (b) - (i), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iv) — This is the row built to catch a candidate who verifies the first half and stops. It gives Pulicat to Andhra Pradesh and Radhanagari to Maharashtra, both correct, and then reverses the last two, sending Bhagwan Mahavir to West Bengal and Jaldapara to Goa. Neither is possible on any reading of the country's geography. Jaldapara is in the Duars of northern West Bengal, rhinoceros country under the eastern Himalaya, and Goa has no such habitat; Bhagwan Mahavir is a Western Ghats sanctuary in Goa, and West Bengal has no part of the Western Ghats. The habit that defeats the row is to check every pair to the end, and the pattern is worth remembering because this paper uses it repeatedly — the setter leaves the easy pairs intact and reverses only the two that fewer candidates can separate.

Protected areas in India are constituted under the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, which provides for national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and, after the amendment of 2002, conservation reserves and community reserves. A sanctuary is declared for the protection of wildlife and its habitat, and certain rights of local people may continue in it subject to regulation; a national park carries stricter protection, in which grazing and rights are not ordinarily permitted, and a sanctuary is often upgraded to a national park as Jaldapara was in 2012. Over that legal framework lie designations of other kinds — the tiger reserves of Project Tiger with their core and buffer zones, biosphere reserves under the UNESCO programme, Ramsar sites for wetlands of international importance and natural World Heritage Sites, of which the serial site covering parts of the Western Ghats is the one that matters most to Maharashtra. The four sanctuaries in this question illustrate four different habitats, and holding them by habitat rather than by name makes them hard to confuse: Radhanagari is Western Ghats evergreen and semi-evergreen forest with gaur; Bhagwan Mahavir is the same forest belt in Goa; Jaldapara is the alluvial grassland and riverine forest of the Duars with the one-horned rhinoceros; and Pulicat is a coastal brackish lagoon whose interest is in its water birds.

Protected areas are examined in every MPSC paper, and the question is nearly always a state-to-sanctuary match, because a sanctuary name carries a state, a habitat and a flagship species and any of them can be tested. The Commission constructs its wrong rows by two standard methods, both on display here: one row simply keeps the printed order of the two columns, and another gets the first two pairs right and reverses the last two. Neither survives a full check, and the discipline of checking to the end is the single most valuable habit in this format. The other lesson is about priorities in preparation. Maharashtra's own protected areas are the most likely to appear and the least excusable to get wrong, so Radhanagari, Tadoba-Andhari, Melghat, Pench, Nagzira, Bhimashankar, Sanjay Gandhi and the Great Indian Bustard sanctuary at Nannaj should be held with their districts and their characteristic species. Beyond the state, the sanctuaries and parks that recur are those attached to a well-known animal — the rhinoceros in Assam and north Bengal, the lion in Gir, the wild ass in the Rann — because that association gives the setter an easy question.

• Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary is in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra, was notified in 1958 as the Dajipur sanctuary and is the oldest sanctuary in the state, known for its population of Indian gaur.
• Pulicat is a brackish coastal lagoon lying across the Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu boundary, second in size among Indian lagoons only to Chilika, separated from the sea by Sriharikota island and known for flamingos and pelicans.
• Jaldapara lies in the Duars of northern West Bengal on the Torsa river in Alipurduar district, is a stronghold of the great one-horned rhinoceros, and was raised from a sanctuary to a national park in 2012.
• Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary is the largest protected area in Goa, lying in the Western Ghats on the Karnataka border and enclosing the Mollem national park and the Dudhsagar falls.
• Sanctuaries and national parks are constituted under the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, a national park carrying stricter protection than a sanctuary, in which certain regulated rights may continue.

• Accepting the row that keeps the two columns in their printed order, when adjacency on the page is layout and asserts no pairing at all
• Verifying the first two pairs of a matching row and stopping, which is precisely what the near-miss row in this question is built to reward
• Misplacing Maharashtra's own sanctuaries, which are the ones this Commission is likeliest to ask about and least likely to excuse
• Confusing a sanctuary with a national park, when the two are distinct categories under the Wildlife (Protection) Act and a sanctuary may later be upgraded

Protected areas reach MPSC papers as state-to-sanctuary matching items of exactly this kind, as one-line questions asking which district a named sanctuary lies in or which species it is known for, and as statement questions about the legal categories of protection. The Commission mixes national sanctuaries with Maharashtra's own, so the state list must be secure and the national list must at least cover the well-known parks attached to a flagship species. Variants ask which sanctuary was the first to be declared in the state, which protected areas fall within the Western Ghats World Heritage Site, or which tiger reserves the state contains. A table of sanctuary, district, state, habitat and flagship species, with the Maharashtra rows learnt first, answers every version of the question.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary, the oldest sanctuary in Maharashtra, is best known for the protection of which animal ?

  • (a)The Indian gaur
  • (b)The great one-horned rhinoceros
  • (c)The Asiatic lion
  • (d)The Indian wild ass

  Answer(a) The Indian gaur — the sanctuary in Kolhapur district was notified in 1958 as the Dajipur sanctuary and is long associated with the gaur, often called the Indian bison. The one-horned rhinoceros belongs to Assam and northern West Bengal, the Asiatic lion to the Gir forest in Gujarat, and the Indian wild ass to the Rann of Kachchh, so each of the other options names a species of a different region altogether.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Pulicat lake, a brackish water lagoon on which a well-known bird sanctuary is situated, lies across the boundary of which two states ?

  • (a)Odisha and Andhra Pradesh
  • (b)Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu
  • (c)Tamil Nadu and Kerala
  • (d)Kerala and Karnataka

  Answer(b) Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu — the lagoon lies along the Coromandel coast, separated from the Bay of Bengal by Sriharikota island, and is second in size among Indian lagoons only to Chilika, which is in Odisha. Its bird sanctuary is known for flamingos and pelicans, and the lake is a standard example when coastal wetlands are examined.