In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. The Kuno Palpur National Park, located in Madhya Pradesh's Chambal (1)__________, has an area of 750 square kilometres. It now has leopards, jackals, spotted deer, sambhar, neelgai, chinkara, wild boar, and four-horned antelope, making it a perfect (2)_________ base for felids. Despite strong objections from Gujarat, which (3)_________ that lions were part of the state's heritage, that MP had a poor (4)________ in wildlife management, and that Kuno Palpur had other big cat species that would (5)___________ lion relocation, the sanctuary was chosen for the lion reintroduction project in 2013.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 1.
- (a)reason
- (b)river
- (c)reign
- (d)region
Answer
Why
Correct — D. The blank completes a place phrase: located in Madhya Pradesh's Chambal ______.
Whatever fills it has to be a tract of land large enough to hold a national park, and region names exactly that.
The other three are near-misses in sound and shape — reason, river, reign. A park sits in a region, not in a river, not in a reign, and not in a reason at all, so option (d) is the fit.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)reason — Reason is abstract — a cause or a motive. Nothing can be geographically located in a reason, and the sentence is giving the park an address, not an explanation.
- (b)river — The Chambal is indeed a river, which is what makes this the tempting wrong answer. But a national park lies beside or around a river, never inside one, and the phrase is fixing where the park is.
- (c)reign — Reign is a period of rule — a stretch of time, not of land. Located in asks for a place, so a reign cannot fill the slot however close its spelling runs to region.
Concept
A cloze blank of this kind is settled by what the preposition demands. After located in, English wants a container: a country, a state, a district, a valley, a region.
Test each option by dropping it straight into the frame. Located in the Chambal region works. Located in the Chambal river, in the Chambal reign, in the Chambal reason do not.
Options built to look and sound like the answer — reason, river, reign against region — are checking whether you read the frame or only the shape of the word.
The Chambal really is a river of that part of Madhya Pradesh, which is why option (b) is planted. A cloze rewards the word the frame allows, not the fact that happens to be true nearby.
Key facts
- After located in, English needs a noun naming a place that can contain something.
- Region means an area of land, while reign means a period of rule.
- The passage places Kuno Palpur National Park in Madhya Pradesh's Chambal region and gives its area as 750 square kilometres.
Study next
Common traps
- Choosing river because the Chambal genuinely is one
- Filling the blank from world knowledge instead of from the sentence frame
- Confusing reign with region when reading at speed
SSC builds cloze distractors that share a shape with the answer, so what decides the item is the frame around the blank rather than recognition of the word.
The same look-alike trap is also used at 18 Sep 2024, 09:00, English Q.25, where the options set adept beside adopt and the blank keys swap.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.