Which of the following Indian Naval Ships were decommissioned in June 2022?
- (a)INS Ganga and INS Nipat
- (b)INS Nishank and INS Akshay
- (c)INS Khukri and INS Sandhayak
- (d)INS Gomati and INS Ranjit
Correct — B, INS Nishank and INS Akshay. Both ships were decommissioned on 3 June 2022, each after about thirty-two years in service. INS Nishank was a Veer-class missile corvette, the Indian version of the Soviet Tarantul design, commissioned on 2 September 1989; INS Akshay was an Abhay-class corvette commissioned on 10 December 1990. They were retired together, and Nishank was afterwards set aside for preservation at the National Maritime Heritage Complex rather than being scrapped.
- (a)INS Ganga and INS Nipat — Both were retired years earlier. INS Nipat, a sister ship of Nishank in the Veer class, was decommissioned on 28 April 2016, and the Godavari-class frigate INS Ganga on 22 March 2018.
- (c)INS Khukri and INS Sandhayak — Both left service in the previous years. The survey ship INS Sandhayak was decommissioned on 4 June 2021 and the corvette INS Khukri on 23 December 2021 — Khukri is now preserved as a museum ship at the INS Khukri Memorial in Diu.
- (d)INS Gomati and INS Ranjit — This is the sharpest trap in the set. The Godavari-class frigate INS Gomati was decommissioned on 28 May 2022, only about a week before the answer pair and in the wrong month. The Rajput-class destroyer INS Ranjit had gone much earlier, on 6 May 2019, and was later sunk as a live torpedo target during an exercise.
Decommissioning is the formal ceremony at which a warship's commissioning pennant is lowered for the last time and she ceases to be one of His Majesty's — in India's case, an Indian Naval Ship. The Indian Navy retired an unusually large number of hulls between 2016 and 2022 as its 1980s-era Soviet-origin missile corvettes, survey ships and first-generation indigenous frigates reached the end of their lives, while a new generation of Project 15B destroyers and Project 17A frigates came down the slipways to replace them.
Four pairs, eight ships, and every one of them genuinely decommissioned — the question is not asking whether these ships were retired but exactly when. That is why a rough sense of the year is not enough here; INS Gomati went in May 2022 and the answer pair in June 2022. The way to hold a question like this is to attach one anchor to each retirement rather than a bare date: Khukri became a memorial at Diu, Ranjit was expended as a target, Nishank was kept for the maritime heritage complex. Reading the option set as a decommissioning timeline, rather than as four unrelated names, is what makes June 2022 stand out.
- INS Nishank and INS Akshay were both decommissioned on 3 June 2022, after roughly thirty-two years of service each.
- INS Nishank was a Veer-class missile corvette commissioned on 2 September 1989; INS Akshay was an Abhay-class corvette commissioned on 10 December 1990.
- INS Gomati, a Godavari-class frigate, was decommissioned on 28 May 2022 — the same year but the previous month.
- INS Khukri was decommissioned on 23 December 2021 and preserved as a museum ship at Diu; INS Sandhayak, a survey ship, went on 4 June 2021.
- INS Nipat was decommissioned on 28 April 2016, INS Ganga on 22 March 2018 and INS Ranjit on 6 May 2019.
Every ship in the options was genuinely decommissioned; only one pair went in June 2022.
- Settling for the right year and missing the month — INS Gomati went in May 2022, not June.
- Assuming a famous name must be the recent one; INS Khukri is well known but was retired in December 2021.
- Confusing sister ships with similar names, such as Nishank and Nipat of the same Veer class.
As this which-pair item, as a single ship-and-date question, or as a statement pair asking what type of vessel a named INS actually is.
Consider the following statements: 1. INS Sindhughosh is an aircraft carrier. 2. INS Viraat is a submarine. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(d) Neither 1 nor 2
The same demand to know Indian Navy ships by name rather than by vague familiarity. UPSC swapped the identities of a submarine and a carrier; the NDA paper swaps the retirement dates. Both are answered only by candidates who file each INS with a specific attribute.
Consider the following statements about INS Sagardhwani: 1. It is an oceanographic research vessel of Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) of DRDO. 2. Recently it embarked on the Sagar Maitri Mission-4 to establish long-term scientific partnerships with Indian Ocean Rim countries in Ocean Research and Development. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(c) Both 1 and 2
Another named-ship item from a later NDA paper, showing how reliably this examiner returns to individual Indian Naval Ships in the news. Whether the fact wanted is a mission, a role or a decommissioning date, the preparation is the same — track ships by name.
- practice — not a real PYQ
INS Khukri, decommissioned in December 2021, has been preserved as a museum ship at
- (a)Kochi
- (b)Diu
- (c)Visakhapatnam
- (d)Port Blair
Answer(b) Diu — she is displayed at the INS Khukri Memorial there.
- practice — not a real PYQ
INS Sandhayak, decommissioned in 2021, was which type of vessel?
- (a)A guided-missile destroyer
- (b)A hydrographic survey ship
- (c)A conventional submarine
- (d)A landing ship tank
Answer(b) A hydrographic survey ship — the lead ship of the Sandhayak class of survey vessels.