SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 13 of 99

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.

Purvanchal Himalayas does NOT comprise of:

(a)Pir Panjal range
(b)Mizo hills
(c)Manipur hills
(d)Naga hills

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The Pir Panjal is a range of the western Himalayas. It runs through Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, walls off the Kashmir Valley from the Jammu plains, and is crossed at the Banihal and Rohtang passes.

The Purvanchal is the eastern arm of the same system. Where the Himalayas bend sharply south after the Dihang gorge, they run down India's frontier with Myanmar as the Patkai Bum, Naga, Manipur and Mizo hills.

Pir Panjal is the range that does not belong → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Mizo hills — The Mizo hills, also called the Lushai hills, lie in Mizoram at the southern end of the Purvanchal chain. They are part of it, so they cannot answer a NOT question.
(c)
Manipur hills — The Manipur hills enclose the Manipur valley and Loktak lake and form the middle section of the Purvanchal. They belong to the very chain the stem asks you to exclude from.
(d)
Naga hills — The Naga hills run along the Indo-Myanmar border in Nagaland and carry Saramati, the state's highest point. They are a core part of the Purvanchal.

Concept

The Himalayas run broadly west to east until the Dihang gorge in Arunachal Pradesh, where the chain takes a sharp turn to the south.

The hills beyond that bend are the Purvanchal, or Eastern Highlands — the Patkai Bum, Naga, Manipur and Mizo (Lushai) hills. They are low, heavily forested, and follow the frontier with Myanmar.

The Pir Panjal sits at the opposite end of the system, in the Lesser Himalaya of the north-west, where it forms the southern wall of the Kashmir Valley.

This is a NOT question, so three options are true of the Purvanchal and one is the intruder. The intruder here is odd by location, not by category — Pir Panjal is a genuine Himalayan range, simply at the wrong end of the chain.

Key facts

The Purvanchal comprises the Patkai Bum, Naga, Manipur and Mizo (Lushai) hills.
The Purvanchal begins where the Himalayas bend sharply south beyond the Dihang gorge.
The Pir Panjal is a Lesser Himalayan range separating the Kashmir Valley from the Jammu region.
The Banihal and Rohtang passes cross the Pir Panjal range.

Study next

Longitudinal divisions of the Himalayas — Trans-Himalaya, Greater, Lesser and ShiwalikHimalayan passes and the range each one crossesNortheastern relief — the Meghalaya plateau against the Purvanchal hills

Common traps

Reading the stem as 'which is a Himalayan range' and missing the NOT.
Grouping the Garo, Khasi and Jaintia hills with the Purvanchal — those belong to the Meghalaya plateau.

SSC tests northeastern hills by asking which chain a named hill belongs to. Khasi hills and Mawsynram is asked at 25 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q.11, and the Shevaroy hills against the Eastern Ghats at 12 Sep 2024, 12:30, GA Q.8, where the Naga hills is offered as a wrong option.

Learn the hills of the northeast as two separate blocks, plateau and Purvanchal.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.