Indian Astronomers are researching towards establishing a new mean time 'Dongla Mean Time (DMT)'. Village Dongla is situated in which district of Madhya Pradesh?

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Correct — B, Ujjain. Dongla is a village in the Mahidpur tehsil of Ujjain district, and it is astronomically interesting for one reason: the Tropic of Cancer (about 23°26′ N) runs through it, and it sits close to the meridian of Ujjain — the line that classical Indian astronomy, from the Surya Siddhanta onwards, treated as India's zero meridian. That is the same latitude–longitude coincidence for which Ujjain itself was called the 'Greenwich of India'. Because of it, an observatory named after Varahamihira, with a planetarium, has been developed at Dongla, and the proposal for a 'Dongla Mean Time' is the idea of computing a reference mean time at this meridian in the old Ujjaini tradition.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) A neighbouring Malwa district of Ujjain division — close enough to be a tempting guess, but Dongla, its observatory and the mean-time proposal all belong to Ujjain district.  (c) A western Malwa district known for Bhojshala and the Mandu fort complex. It has no connection with the Dongla observatory or with Ujjain's meridian tradition.  (d) A Nimar district in the far south-west of the state, on the Narmada. It lies well south of the Tropic of Cancer, so it could not host a site whose whole significance is that the Tropic passes through it.

Concept: Every place has its own local mean time, fixed by the longitude of its meridian: the Earth turns 15° of longitude in one hour, so 1° equals 4 minutes of time. A country then picks one meridian as its standard — India uses 82°30′ E, which makes Indian Standard Time UTC+5:30. Classical Indian astronomy did the same thing much earlier, but with Ujjayini (Ujjain) as the prime meridian; the Surya Siddhanta describes the zero meridian as passing through Avanti (Ujjain) and Rohitaka (Rohtak). Ujjain's other claim is latitude — the Tropic of Cancer runs through the district, which made it the natural reference point for solar observation. Dongla, a village in Mahidpur tehsil of the same district, sits on that Tropic, and 'Dongla Mean Time' is a proposal to revive a meridian-based Indian reference time there.

State PCS 2026 Q76 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q76 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer