Which of the following districts of Uttar Pradesh shares its boundary with only one other district of Uttar Pradesh ?
1. Lalitpur
2. Saharanpur
3. Sonbhadra
Select the correct answer from the code giv

Question

Which of the following districts of Uttar Pradesh shares its boundary with only one other district of Uttar Pradesh ?
1. Lalitpur
2. Saharanpur
3. Sonbhadra
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, only 1, Lalitpur. Lalitpur is Uttar Pradesh's southernmost district and effectively a salient of the state pushed down into Madhya Pradesh: it is bounded by Sagar and Tikamgarh to the east and south-east and by Ashoknagar to the west across the Betwa, all in Madhya Pradesh, and it touches its own state at only one point — a narrow corridor in the north-east that connects it to Jhansi. That single intra-state neighbour is what the question is after. The other two districts named are corner districts too, but corner position works the other way for them. Saharanpur, in the far north-west, borders Muzaffarnagar and Shamli within Uttar Pradesh, in addition to Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana outside it. Sonbhadra, at the south-eastern tip, borders Mirzapur and Chandauli within the state, in addition to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar — it is in fact the only district in India that touches four other states. Both therefore have two Uttar Pradesh neighbours, not one, so only statement 1 qualifies and the code gives (d).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Lalitpur qualifies, Saharanpur does not. Saharanpur lies in Uttar Pradesh's north-western corner, wedged between Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, which makes it feel isolated from the rest of the state — but within Uttar Pradesh it still has two neighbours, Muzaffarnagar to the south and Shamli to the south-west. Shamli is the one people forget, since it was carved out of Muzaffarnagar only in 2011.  (b) This drops the one district that actually fits and keeps the two that do not. Saharanpur borders Muzaffarnagar and Shamli within Uttar Pradesh, and Sonbhadra borders Mirzapur and Chandauli — two intra-state neighbours each. Sonbhadra's fame comes from the opposite property: it touches four different states, which is why candidates wrongly assume it must be cut off from Uttar Pradesh.  (c) Only one of the three has a single Uttar Pradesh neighbour. Being on the edge of the state means having many inter-state neighbours, not few intra-state ones; Saharanpur and Sonbhadra each keep two districts of their own state on their inner side, and only Lalitpur narrows to a single connection, through Jhansi.

Concept: Lalitpur is the extreme case of a familiar map feature — a district that projects out of its own state into a neighbour's territory. Sitting at the southern end of Uttar Pradesh's Bundelkhand, in Jhansi division, it is almost entirely ringed by Madhya Pradesh, with Sagar and Tikamgarh on the east and south-east and Ashoknagar across the Betwa on the west, so its only link to the rest of Uttar Pradesh is a narrow neck in the north-east that meets Jhansi. That geometry makes it the answer to the specific question of which Uttar Pradesh district borders just one other Uttar Pradesh district. Saharanpur and Sonbhadra occupy the other two extremities of the state and are the natural distractors, because their outer sides are all inter-state boundary; but each still faces two districts of its own state on the inner side.

State PCS 2025 Q110 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q110 — Geography PYQ with Answer