SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 7 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 10 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.

The New Moore Island is in geographic proximity to:

(a)Bangladesh
(b)Myanmar
(c)Pakistan
(d)Sri Lanka

Answer

Why

Correct — A. New Moore Island lay in the mouth of the Hariabhanga river, in the Bay of Bengal, on the stretch of the Sundarbans delta where India meets Bangladesh.

Both countries claimed the sandbar and each had its own name for it — New Moore or Purbasha in India, South Talpatti in Bangladesh — and neither ever settled anyone on it.

The proximity the stem asks about is therefore to Bangladesh, option (a). The island itself has since gone: by 2010 it had submerged and no longer showed above the water.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Myanmar — Myanmar is India's maritime neighbour at the eastern edge of the Bay of Bengal, near the Andaman group. The island in this stem lies in the Sundarbans delta, at the northern head of the same bay.
(c)
Pakistan — Pakistan shares a disputed marshland boundary with India at Sir Creek, in the Rann of Kutch — a different argument, on the Arabian Sea side of the country.
(d)
Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka is the partner in the Katchatheevu question, an uninhabited islet in the Palk Strait. It is the island most often confused with this one, because both are tiny and both have been argued over.

Concept

New Moore Island was a sandbar in the estuary of the Hariabhanga, the river that runs along part of the India-Bangladesh boundary in the Sundarbans delta.

It was never inhabited, and its value was never the land. A patch of territory in an estuary shifts the baseline from which a maritime boundary is drawn, and with it the claim to the seabed and the fishing waters beyond — which is why two states argued over a bare sandbar.

Rising sea level settled the argument on the ground. By 2010 the island had submerged.

Small disputed islands are asked as neighbour-pairing items, so the useful thing to store is the pairing rather than the detail of the dispute.

New Moore goes with Bangladesh, Katchatheevu with Sri Lanka, Sir Creek with Pakistan.

Key facts

New Moore Island lay in the Hariabhanga estuary in the Bay of Bengal, between India and Bangladesh.
India called it New Moore or Purbasha and Bangladesh called it South Talpatti.
The island was uninhabited and both countries claimed it.
By 2010 it had submerged and no longer appeared above sea level.

Study next

India's maritime boundaries and the neighbour on each sideKatchatheevu in the Palk Strait and Sir Creek in the Rann of KutchThe Sundarbans delta and the rivers that shape the India-Bangladesh boundary

Common traps

Reading 'island in the Bay of Bengal' as the Andamans and answering Myanmar.
Confusing it with Katchatheevu, which lies off Sri Lanka in the Palk Strait.

Islands come up as one-line identification items — a location, a superlative or a neighbour — rather than as anything to reason out.

The largest inhabited riverine island in the world is asked in the same format on 19 Sep 2024, 16:00 at General Awareness Q.1.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.