NDA (II) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 148 of 150

Correct — B, the pairing of the Ganga with the Penganga. The Penganga, or Painganga, is a Deccan river, not a north Indian one. It rises near Madh in the Ajanta ranges of Buldhana district in Maharashtra, runs about 495 km, forms part of the Maharashtra-Telangana boundary, and joins the Wardha; the Wardha meets the Wainganga to form the Pranhita, which is one of the great left-bank tributaries of the Godavari. So the Penganga's water reaches the Bay of Bengal through the Godavari and has nothing to do with the Ganga system, which drains the plains far to the north. The other three pairs are all sound, so the incorrectly matched one is (b).

• (a)Godavari : Indravati — Correctly matched. The Indravati rises in the Eastern Ghats of Odisha, crosses Chhattisgarh past the Chitrakote falls and joins the Godavari from the left, alongside the Pranhita, the Manjra and the Sabari.
• (c)Krishna : Bhima — Correctly matched. The Bhima rises near the Bhimashankar hills on the western side of the Western Ghats and flows south-east for about 861 km through Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana before joining the Krishna.
• (d)Luni : Sukri — Correctly matched. The Sukri is one of the main left-bank tributaries of the Luni, along with the Jawai, Guhiya, Bandi and Liladi; the Luni itself rises in the Aravallis near Ajmer and is lost in the marshes of the Rann of Kachchh.

The peninsular rivers fall into a small number of large systems. The Godavari, longest of them, gathers the Purna, Manjra, Pranhita, Indravati and Sabari; the Pranhita itself is formed by the Wardha and the Wainganga, and the Penganga feeds the Wardha. The Krishna takes the Bhima, the Tungabhadra, the Koyna and the Musi. The Luni is the exception in the north-west, an inland river of the Thar that never reaches the sea and ends in the Rann of Kachchh.

Pairing questions of this kind are usually settled by geography rather than by memory of a list. Ask which drainage basin a name belongs to, and whether that basin can plausibly touch the parent river. The Ganga system drains the northern plains; the Penganga is a river of the Vidarbha and Marathwada uplands, on the far side of the Satpuras and the Vindhyas, so no tributary relationship is possible. The examiner is relying on the two names sounding alike, and the UPSC used the very same Penganga-Godavari fact in a prelims paper in 2000.

• The Penganga rises in the Ajanta ranges of Buldhana district, Maharashtra, and runs about 495 km.
• It joins the Wardha, which meets the Wainganga to form the Pranhita, a left-bank tributary of the Godavari.
• The Indravati rises in Odisha, crosses Chhattisgarh and joins the Godavari.
• The Bhima rises near Bhimashankar in the Western Ghats and flows about 861 km before joining the Krishna.
• The Sukri is a left-bank tributary of the Luni, which rises near Ajmer and ends in the Rann of Kachchh without reaching the sea.

• Attaching a Deccan tributary to a north Indian river because the names sound alike.
• Confusing the Penganga with the Pranhita; the first is a tributary of the Wardha, the second is formed by the Wardha and Wainganga.
• Assuming the Luni reaches the Arabian Sea; it is lost in the Rann of Kachchh.

River questions come as a not-correctly-matched pairing, as a list of tributaries to be filtered, or as a where-does-it-end item.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Pranhita, a major tributary of the Godavari, is formed by the confluence of

  • (a)the Indravati and the Sabari
  • (b)the Wardha and the Wainganga
  • (c)the Manjra and the Purna
  • (d)the Penganga and the Bhima

  Answer(b) the Wardha and the Wainganga — with the Penganga feeding the Wardha upstream.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following rivers does not reach the sea?

  • (a)Mahanadi
  • (b)Luni
  • (c)Periyar
  • (d)Subarnarekha

  Answer(b) Luni — an inland river that ends in the marshes of the Rann of Kachchh.