SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 3 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Harela is a festival of greenery, peace, prosperity, and environmental conservation, primarily celebrated in which of the following states?

(a)Madhya Pradesh
(b)Assam
(c)Uttarakhand
(d)Haryana

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Harela is a festival of the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, kept at the start of the month of Shravan, when the monsoon reaches the hills and sowing begins.

The name is read as 'day of green'. Households sow grain in baskets days ahead and cut the young shoots on the festival day, and planting saplings is the public ritual the state now runs tree-plantation drives around. That agrarian frame is what makes option (c) the answer.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Madhya Pradesh — Harela is not part of Madhya Pradesh's calendar. The state's best-known tribal festival is Bhagoria, held in the Jhabua and Alirajpur belt in the days before Holi.
(b)
Assam — Assam's seasonal cycle turns on Bihu, kept three times a year — Rongali, Kati and Magh. Harela is a Central Himalayan festival, not a Brahmaputra valley one.
(d)
Haryana — Haryana keeps Teej in Shravan, the same month, and that overlap is what makes this option tempting. The sapling-planting festival of that month belongs to Kumaon.

Concept

State festivals are a reliable SSC slot, and the fastest way to hold them is by region and by what the festival is for.

Harela belongs to the Central Himalaya and sits squarely on the farming calendar: the monsoon arriving in the hills, the sowing season opening. Its ritual, putting a sapling in the ground, has since been absorbed into state environment campaigns.

Uttarakhand's other festivals follow the same logic — Phool Dei greets spring, Ghee Sankranti falls in mid-monsoon, and the Nanda Devi Raj Jat is the great pilgrimage of Garhwal.

Key facts

Harela is celebrated chiefly in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand at the beginning of the month of Shravan, in July.
Its central ritual is the planting of saplings, which Uttarakhand marks with an annual tree-plantation drive.
Other Uttarakhand festivals on the same agrarian calendar include Phool Dei, Ghee Sankranti and the Nanda Devi Raj Jat.

Study next

Uttarakhand's festival calendar: Harela, Phool Dei, Ghee Sankranti, Nanda Devi Raj JatHarvest festivals state by state: Bihu, Baisakhi, Pongal, Onam, NuakhaiKumaon and Garhwal as the two culture regions of Uttarakhand

Common traps

Reading 'festival of greenery' as a tribal forest festival and reaching for Madhya Pradesh.
Choosing Haryana because Teej also falls in the month of Shravan.

SSC asks festivals as a one-to-one state match; here the three wrong options are drawn from three different regions. Culture also comes up in this shift at General Awareness Q.9 on Mohiniyattam and Q.12 on the instrument of Ustad Vilayat Ali Khan.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.