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
Answer
Why
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.
Why the others are wrong
- (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.
Concept
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.
Key facts
- 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.
Study next
Common traps
- 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.
Related PYQs
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
- 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.