UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q107: Which of the following districts of Uttarakhand has the

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q107?

A. Correct — A, **Haridwar**. The stem asks which district has the highest agricultural LAND — the extent under the plough, not the tonnage that comes off it. That distinction is the whole question. Haridwar is the one district of the four sitting squarely on the Ganga plain, at the point where the river leaves the mountains. Level alluvium rather than slope, and watered by the Upper Ganga Canal, whose headworks stand at Haridwar itself. Of its reporting area of about 244,000 hectares, roughly half is net sown — the highest share of any district in a state that is overwhelmingly hill and forest. Carry away the distinction the item is built on: **cultivated extent and foodgrain output are different superlatives**, and this stem asks for the first.

UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 107 of 149

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per UKPSC's provisional answer key.

Answers from UKPSC's provisional answer key. The Commission publishes a provisional key for UKPSC Prelims 2025 and invites objections before issuing a final key. Every answer shown here is the Commission's own provisional answer (key PDF), not our derivation. If the final key changes an answer, this page is updated to match.

Which of the following districts of Uttarakhand has the highest agricultural land?

(a)Haridwar
(b)Udham Singh Nagar
(c)Dehradun
(d)Nainital

Answer

Why

Correct — A, Haridwar.

The stem asks which district has the highest agricultural LAND — the extent under the plough, not the tonnage that comes off it. That distinction is the whole question.

Haridwar is the one district of the four sitting squarely on the Ganga plain, at the point where the river leaves the mountains. Level alluvium rather than slope, and watered by the Upper Ganga Canal, whose headworks stand at Haridwar itself.

Of its reporting area of about 244,000 hectares, roughly half is net sown — the highest share of any district in a state that is overwhelmingly hill and forest.

Carry away the distinction the item is built on: cultivated extent and foodgrain output are different superlatives, and this stem asks for the first.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Udham Singh Nagar — Udham Singh Nagar is the Terai district and the state's grain engine — Pantnagar, sugar mills and a dense rice-wheat rotation.
It is the right answer to which district leads Uttarakhand in foodgrain production, which is an output superlative. The stem here asks for cultivated extent, and that is Haridwar.
(c)
Dehradun — Dehradun's farmland lies on the floor of the Doon valley, an intermontane trough hemmed in by the Shivalik range on one side and the Lesser Himalaya on the other. That setting caps how far cultivation can spread outward.
It is the right answer to which district holds the Doon valley and the state capital, and it is the home of the basmati and litchi the valley is known for.
(d)
Nainital — Nainital has the largest geographical area of the four districts named, but area is not farmland. Much of it is Kumaon hill slope and forest, where cultivation is terraced, broken into small parcels and mixed with orchard land.
It is the right answer to which district contains the lake town of Nainital and the Kumaon fruit belt around Bhowali and Ramgarh, rather than to a question about the widest spread of cropland.

Concept

Three different quantities get confused in land-use questions: a district's total geographical area, the part of it that is actually cultivated, and what that cultivated land produces.

In a mountain state these come apart sharply. Slope, soil depth and water availability decide where a plough can go, so a large hill district may carry less cropland than a smaller district lying in the plains.

Uttarakhand's continuous cultivable land lies in the southern strip — the Ganga plain around Haridwar and the Bhabar-Terai belt along the Kumaon foothills — together with intermontane valleys such as the Doon.

Uttarakhand's agricultural picture rests on this geography. The plains districts carry the canal and tubewell irrigation and the marketable surplus, while the hill districts work terraced holdings that are small, largely rain-fed and increasingly left uncultivated as families move away.

Reading exactly which quantity a table reports — cultivated extent, output or yield — is what lets you use the state's land-use and cropping tables instead of memorising a district name.

Key facts

Uttarakhand is predominantly hill and mountain terrain; its level cultivable land lies mainly in the southern plains strip and in intermontane valleys.
Haridwar's reporting area is about 244,000 hectares, of which roughly half is net sown — the largest cultivated share among Uttarakhand's districts.
Haridwar district lies on the Ganga plain where the Ganga emerges from the hills; the Shivalik range and Rajaji National Park edge its northern side.
Haridwar's reporting area is 243,972 hectares, of which 114,062 hectares are net sown and 84,140 hectares are forest.
The Upper Ganga Canal takes off from the Ganga at Haridwar; it was opened in 1854, work having begun in April 1842 after the famine of 1837-38.
Haridwar district was created in 1988 out of Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh and passed to Uttarakhand when the state was formed in 2000.
Udham Singh Nagar was carved out of Nainital district in 1995, lies in the Terai belt, and is described as the food bowl of Uttarakhand.
Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology at Pantnagar, in Udham Singh Nagar, was established in 1960 as India's first agricultural university.
Of the four districts named in this question, Nainital has the largest geographical area, much of it Kumaon hill slope and forest.
The Bhabar is the porous gravel piedmont where hill streams sink underground; the Terai to its south is where that water re-emerges as marshy springs.

Four districts, four kinds of terrain

Haridwar — Ganga plain, canal-irrigated→Most land under the plough — level alluvium under the Upper Ganga Canal

Udham Singh Nagar — Terai, rice-wheat rotation→Leads on foodgrain OUTPUT, a different superlative

Dehradun — Doon valley floor between two ranges→Cropland boxed in by relief

Nainital — largest area of the four→Largely hill slope and forest

Relief and irrigation, not district size, set how much land can be ploughed.

Study next

Uttarakhand land-use classification: net sown area, forest, barren and culturable wasteThe Bhabar and Terai belts along the Uttarakhand foothillsDuns of Uttarakhand and the structure of the Doon valleyThe Upper Ganga Canal and irrigation in the Uttarakhand plainsHill agriculture in Uttarakhand: terrace farming, small holdings and land abandonmentPrincipal crops and horticulture belts of Uttarakhand, district by district

Common traps

Answering with the district famous for producing the most grain. Output and cultivated extent are different superlatives, and this stem asks for extent.
Using a district's total geographical area as a proxy for its farmland — the largest district among these four is mostly hill slope and forest.
Reading fame for a crop — basmati, litchi, hill fruit — as evidence that the district has a large cultivated area.
Blurring irrigated area, net sown area and gross cropped area, which are three different columns in the same land-use table.

This idea surfaces as a bare superlative — which district of the state stands highest or lowest on some indicator. The safe habit is to read the indicator precisely, because land, production, yield and irrigated area each point somewhere different.

It also appears as land-use classification, as matching a physiographic belt to its crops, and as two-statement code items about how a state's area splits between land-use classes.

Related PYQs

UKPSC_2016_MAINS_PaperIV_Q362016

Same state and the same subject — agricultural land in Uttarakhand and how terrain governs it. What differs is the half of the state each looks at and the format: the 2016 Mains item asks you to describe the types of mountainous farmland, while this prelims item asks a superlative that lands on a plains district.

UKPSC_2023_MAINS_UKPCSMainsEco2023_Q132023

Same device — name the Uttarakhand district that stands highest on a stated indicator. What differs is the indicator and its source: literacy from Census 2011 there, agricultural land here. The transferable habit is checking exactly which quantity the superlative attaches to.

UPPSC_2023_PRE_GSI_Q592023

Same underlying theme — how a state's area splits between land-use classes, and which districts hold which class. What differs is the state, the class (forest rather than cropland) and the format: a two-statement code item rather than a single-district superlative.

MPPSC_2021_PRE_PaperI_Q482021

Same link between canal irrigation and where cultivation becomes possible, which is why canal-fed plains carry continuous cropland. What differs is the object asked for and the region: that item names the canal serving western Rajasthan, this one names a district.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Upper Ganga Canal takes off from the Ganga at which of the following places?
- (a)Narora
- (b)Haridwar
- (c)Kanpur
- (d)Rishikesh
Answerb — Haridwar. The canal's headworks stand on the Ganga at Haridwar, where the river leaves the hills for the plain, and the canal was opened in 1854.
Narora is the head of the Lower Ganga Canal. Kanpur lies far downstream on the canal's branch system rather than at its head. Rishikesh is upstream of Haridwar, where the Ganga is still within the hills.
practice — not a real PYQ
Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, lies in which district of Uttarakhand?
- (a)Haridwar
- (b)Dehradun
- (c)Nainital
- (d)Udham Singh Nagar
Answerd — Udham Singh Nagar. Pantnagar sits in the Terai plain of Udham Singh Nagar, the district carved out of Nainital in 1995.
Nainital would have been right only before that bifurcation, since Pantnagar lay within it until 1995. Haridwar is associated with Gurukul Kangri, and Dehradun with the Forest Research Institute and the state capital.
practice — not a real PYQ
In the Uttarakhand foothill zone, the belt in which descending hill streams sink into porous gravel and run underground is known as the —
- (a)Terai
- (b)Bhabar
- (c)Dun
- (d)Bugyal
Answerb — Bhabar. The Bhabar is the piedmont apron of coarse gravel and boulders below the Shivaliks, where streams percolate into the loose debris.
The Terai lies south of it and is the marshy belt where that groundwater re-emerges. A dun is an intermontane valley such as the Doon, and a bugyal is a high alpine meadow.
practice — not a real PYQ
Consider the following statements about Uttarakhand: (1) Haridwar lies on the Ganga plain and is the point from which the Upper Ganga Canal takes off. (2) Udham Singh Nagar lies in the Terai belt and was carved out of Nainital district. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Answerc — Both 1 and 2. Haridwar stands where the Ganga emerges onto the plain, and the Upper Ganga Canal has its head there; Udham Singh Nagar is the Terai district formed out of Nainital in 1995.
So 'a' and 'b' each reject a true statement, and 'd' rejects both. Statement 1 rests on the canal's headworks, statement 2 on the district's creation.