The Headquarters of South-Eastern Railway is located at
- (a)Bilaspur.
- (b)Secunderabad.
- (c)Kolkata.
- (d)Bhubaneswar.
Correct — C, Kolkata. The South Eastern Railway zone has its headquarters at Garden Reach in Kolkata (West Bengal). The other three towns in the options are the headquarters of different railway zones, which is exactly what makes them tempting near-misses.
- (a)Bilaspur. — Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh) is the headquarters of the South East Central Railway, a zone carved partly out of the old South Eastern Railway — not of the South Eastern Railway itself.
- (b)Secunderabad. — Secunderabad (Telangana) is the headquarters of the South Central Railway, a different zone.
- (d)Bhubaneswar. — Bhubaneswar (Odisha) is the headquarters of the East Coast Railway, again a separate zone, so it is not the answer.
Indian Railways is administratively divided into zones, each with its own headquarters and further split into divisions. The South Eastern Railway, one of the older zones serving eastern India, is headquartered at Garden Reach in Kolkata. Reorganisation over the years created new zones (such as the South East Central and East Coast Railways) whose headquarters are the distractor towns here.
All four options are genuine railway-zone headquarters, so the task is to match the correct town to the South Eastern Railway specifically. The trap is that several of the towns lie in the same broad region and were once linked to the same parent zone.
- South Eastern Railway — headquarters at Kolkata (Garden Reach).
- South East Central Railway — headquarters at Bilaspur.
- South Central Railway — headquarters at Secunderabad.
- East Coast Railway — headquarters at Bhubaneswar.
The South Eastern Railway is headquartered at Kolkata — option (c).
- Confusing the South Eastern Railway (Kolkata) with the South East Central Railway (Bilaspur).
- Assuming a zone with 'South' in its name must be headquartered in southern India.
Asked as 'headquarters of railway zone X', or as a match-list pairing zones with their headquarters.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The headquarters of the South Central Railway is located at
- (a)Chennai
- (b)Secunderabad
- (c)Bengaluru
- (d)Vijayawada
Answer(b) Secunderabad — the South Central Railway zone is headquartered there.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The East Coast Railway has its headquarters at
- (a)Kolkata
- (b)Visakhapatnam
- (c)Bhubaneswar
- (d)Cuttack
Answer(c) Bhubaneswar — the East Coast Railway zone is headquartered there.