The Asirgarh hills are situated:

Question

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Correct — A, in the western Satpura. Asirgarh is the hill that carries Asirgarh Fort, roughly 20 km north of Burhanpur in Burhanpur district, in the far south-west of Madhya Pradesh. It stands on a spur at the western end of the Satpura system and commands the pass that links the Narmada valley on the north with the Tapti valley on the south — the historic road from northern India into the Deccan, which is why the fort was called Bab-e-Dakhan, the Gateway (or Key) to the Deccan. Its position is unambiguously western: Burhanpur sits on the Tapti in the Nimar–Khandesh gap, well west of the Mahadeo Hills of the central Satpura and far west of the Maikal range at the eastern end.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) The eastern arm of the Satpura system lies across Chhindwara, Seoni, Mandla and Dindori, ending in the Maikal hills. Burhanpur and Asirgarh are on the opposite, south-western edge of the state.  (c) The Maikal range is the easternmost limb of the Satpura, the Amarkantak country where the Narmada and the Son rise. It is a different end of the same range altogether.  (d) Baghelkhand is the north-eastern plateau of Madhya Pradesh — Rewa, Satna, Sidhi, Shahdol — built of Vindhyan sandstone and lying north of the Narmada. It is a separate physiographic unit and not part of the Satpura system at all.

Concept: Madhya Pradesh divides physiographically into the Vindhyan scarplands and Malwa plateau north of the Narmada, the Narmada–Son rift valley itself, the Satpura block south of it, and the Baghelkhand and Bundelkhand plateaus in the north-east and north. The Satpura is not one ridge but a west-to-east chain: the Barwani and Rajpipla hills at the western end, the Mahadeo Hills in the centre around Pachmarhi, and the Maikal range in the east around Amarkantak. Asirgarh sits at the western end of that chain, above the gap where the Tapti valley meets the routes north — a saddle so strategically placed that whoever held the fort controlled entry to the Deccan.

State PCS 2026 Q79 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q79 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer