The Tropic of Cancer is going through which States of India ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), Gujarat – Madhya Pradesh – Tripura – Mizoram. The Tropic of Cancer (23°30'N) crosses India through exactly eight states, running roughly west to east: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tripura and Mizoram. All four states named in this option — Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura and Mizoram — belong to that set of eight, which is why it is the only option in which every named state is genuinely crossed by the line. The other three options each substitute in a state that lies entirely to one side of the parallel, which is exactly the kind of near-miss this style of question is built to catch.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Gujarat, West Bengal and Tripura are all genuinely on the list of eight, but Maharashtra is not. Maharashtra lies immediately south of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, and its northernmost districts (such as Nandurbar) sit just below 22°N — south of the 23°30'N line — so the Tropic of Cancer never actually enters the state. The error works precisely because Maharashtra borders two states the line does pass through.  (c) West Bengal and Mizoram are on the correct list, but both Maharashtra and Bihar are not. Maharashtra sits south of the line for the reason given above, and present-day Bihar lies north of it, entirely above 23°30'N — it is Jharkhand, carved out of southern Bihar in 2000, that the Tropic of Cancer actually crosses. Two errors in the same option make this the least accurate of the four.  (d) Gujarat, Tripura and West Bengal are correctly on the list, but Bihar is not — that is the one substitution error here. Before Jharkhand's creation in 2000, the districts the line passes through belonged to undivided Bihar, which is why Bihar is such a persistent wrong answer in this question; today those districts are in Jharkhand, and present-day Bihar lies entirely north of the parallel.

Concept: The Tropic of Cancer at 23°30'N is the northernmost latitude at which the sun can appear directly overhead, and it divides India into a northern subtropical zone and a southern tropical zone. Locating exactly which eight states it crosses — and which large, well-known states it narrowly misses — is a standard test of precise map knowledge rather than general geographic sense.

State PCS 2025 Q16 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q16 — Geography PYQ with Answer