Which of the following pairs is/are NOT correctly matched ?
(Biosphere Reserve) – (State)
1. Nokrek – Manipur
2. Manas – Assam
3. Agasthyamalai – Kerala
Select the correct answer from the code given b

Question

Which of the following pairs is/are NOT correctly matched ?
(Biosphere Reserve) – (State)
1. Nokrek – Manipur
2. Manas – Assam
3. Agasthyamalai – Kerala
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, Only 1. Say that to yourself before you fill the bubble, because on this booklet 'Only 1' has been moved to option (d); the slot most candidates reach for out of habit, option (a), reads '1 and 2' here. Now the pairs. Pair 1 is the mismatch. Nokrek Biosphere Reserve is in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, not in Manipur — it was notified in 1988, Nokrek Peak is the highest point of the Garo Hills, and the reserve is best known for the Citrus gene sanctuary protecting Citrus indica, the wild Indian orange from which cultivated citrus is believed to descend. Manipur, for its part, has no notified biosphere reserve at all; its celebrated protected area is Keibul Lamjao National Park on Loktak Lake, the floating park of the sangai deer, which is a different thing entirely. Pair 2 is correct: Manas Biosphere Reserve was notified in 1989 and lies in Assam, on the Bhutan border, taking its name from the Manas river; Manas National Park at its core is a UNESCO natural World Heritage Site and one of the nine original tiger reserves of Project Tiger. Pair 3 is also correct as the question puts it: Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve, notified in 2001, covers the southernmost Western Ghats and its Kerala component — the Neyyar, Peppara and Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuaries — is the larger part of it. The reserve does extend across the state line into Tamil Nadu through the Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, so 'Kerala' is incomplete rather than wrong, and Kerala is in any case the only one of the two states offered anywhere in this question. Exactly one pair is therefore wrong, and it is the first: option (d).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Pair 1 is correctly identified as wrong, but Manas is genuinely in Assam, so this option wrongly condemns it. Manas Biosphere Reserve was notified in 1989 in the western Assam districts along the Himalayan foothills, contiguous across the international boundary with Bhutan's Royal Manas National Park. This option is also the paper's structural trap: on the layout most candidates have memorised, (a) is where 'Only 1' would sit, and a student who works out that just the first pair is wrong and then marks the remembered position lands here.  (b) Both of these pairs are correct, so this option gets the question exactly backwards — it acquits the one wrong pair and condemns the two right ones. Manas is in Assam and Agasthyamalai's Kerala sanctuaries are its core. This is the option marked by a candidate who reads the stem as 'which pairs ARE correctly matched' and forgets the NOT.  (c) This rests on a real piece of knowledge misapplied. Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve does straddle two states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, so a well-read candidate may feel that pairing it with Kerala alone is an error. It is not: Kerala genuinely contains the reserve's Neyyar, Peppara and Shendurney sanctuaries, and the pairing is incomplete rather than false. UPPSC's own key treats it as correctly matched, and the question offers no option that would let Tamil Nadu be named instead. Meanwhile this choice lets the clear error in pair 1 pass unnoticed.

Concept: A biosphere reserve is a large, zoned conservation unit under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme, designed to protect an ecosystem while allowing the traditional human communities inside it to continue living and working there. Each has a strictly protected core, a buffer where limited research and regulated use are allowed, and a transition area of settlement and sustainable economic activity. India began notifying them in 1986 with the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and now has eighteen, of which a majority — Nokrek since 2009, Agasthyamalai since 2016 — are also on UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves. A biosphere reserve is a distinct designation, not a synonym for a national park or a tiger reserve, though it usually contains one.

State PCS 2025 Q138 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q138 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer