UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q136: In which of the following years were the Jaunsari, Tharu,

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q136?

A. Correct — A, 1967. The communities named in the stem — Jaunsari, Tharu, Bhotia, Buksa and Raji — are the ones notified as Scheduled Tribes for this region, and they were placed on that list in **1967**. The date belongs to a different administrative map. In 1967 the hill and tarai districts they live in were part of Uttar Pradesh; the separate state was carved out only on 9 November 2000. Carry away the working rule: **a Scheduled Tribe entry is dated to the order that made it and the parent state it was made for, not to the state that later inherited it.**

UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 136 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.

In which of the following years were the Jaunsari, Tharu, Bhotia, Buksa and Raji tribes declared Scheduled Tribes in Uttarakhand?

(a)1967
(b)1968
(c)1969
(d)1970

Answer

Why

Correct — A, 1967.

The communities named in the stem — Jaunsari, Tharu, Bhotia, Buksa and Raji — are the ones notified as Scheduled Tribes for this region, and they were placed on that list in 1967.

The date belongs to a different administrative map. In 1967 the hill and tarai districts they live in were part of Uttar Pradesh; the separate state was carved out only on 9 November 2000.

Carry away the working rule: a Scheduled Tribe entry is dated to the order that made it and the parent state it was made for, not to the state that later inherited it.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
1968 — Wrong — 1968 falls one year after the notification, which makes it the nearest year to the correct one on this list.
The peg is 1967, a Uttar Pradesh-era decision taken thirty-three years before the state of Uttarakhand came into being. Fix the entry to the parent state and the year stops floating.
(c)
1969 — Wrong — 1969 sits two years past the notification. It does mark something in the region's chronology: it is the year Garhwal division was established, then a division of Uttar Pradesh.
That is a revenue-administration date. A Scheduled Tribe entry comes by a different route — a notification and, thereafter, an Act of Parliament — not by rearranging divisions.
(d)
1970 — Wrong — 1970 is three years past the notification. In the Garhwal Himalaya the year is remembered for the Alaknanda flood of July 1970, when a landslide blocked the river and the damage ran from near Badrinath down towards Haridwar.
That flood belongs to the region's environmental history and is widely cited as the backdrop to the Chipko movement, which began at Mandal village in 1973. Keep it in a separate file from Article 342 and the Scheduled Tribes list.

Concept

Scheduled Tribe status is not a description of how a community lives; it is an entry on a list drawn up for a named State or Union Territory.

Article 342(1) has the President, after consulting the Governor, specify by public notification the tribes deemed Scheduled Tribes in relation to that State. Article 342(2) then reserves any later inclusion or exclusion to a law made by Parliament.

Because the list is written state by state, a community can be a Scheduled Tribe in one State and not in another. The operative question is 'listed where, and by which instrument'.

Uttarakhand's Scheduled Tribes form a small share of its population and are spread across the state's distinct ecological belts.

Bhotia villages sit in the high valleys of Chamoli, Pithoragarh and Uttarkashi, with a semi-nomadic, migratory pastoral cycle. Jaunsari occupy the Jaunsar-Bawar tract of Dehradun district.

Raji live in forest tracts of the Kumaon hills, while Tharu and Buksa belong to the tarai-bhabar foothills. The 1967 entry is what the five share on paper — and it was made for Uttar Pradesh, which is where the date does its work in this question.

Key facts

The Scheduled Tribes notified for Uttarakhand are Bhotia, Buksa, Jaunsari, Raji and Tharu.
These communities were placed on the Scheduled Tribes list in 1967, when their districts formed part of Uttar Pradesh.
The new state was formed on 9 November 2000 under the name Uttaranchal and was renamed Uttarakhand in 2007.
Article 342(1) empowers the President to notify Scheduled Tribes for a named State; Article 342(2) leaves later inclusion or exclusion to Parliament by law.
Buksa and Raji are the communities of Uttarakhand classified among the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.
Bhotia are concentrated in Chamoli, Pithoragarh and Uttarkashi and follow a semi-nomadic, migratory pastoral cycle.
Jaunsari are concentrated in the Jaunsar-Bawar tract of Dehradun district; Tharu and Buksa live in the tarai-bhabar foothills.
Garhwal division was established in 1969, and the Alaknanda flood of July 1970 struck the Garhwal Himalaya the following year.

Close-set dates in the Uttarakhand region's chronology

Jaunsari, Tharu, Bhotia, Buksa and Raji notified as Scheduled Tribes→1967, for Uttar Pradesh

Garhwal division established→1969

Alaknanda flood, Garhwal Himalaya→July 1970

Chipko movement begins at Mandal village→1973

Separate state formed out of Uttar Pradesh→9 November 2000

The notification is a Uttar Pradesh-era act, thirty-three years older than the state that administers it today.

Study next

Article 342 and the procedure for amending a State's Scheduled Tribes listParticularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups: the criteria, and the communities so classified in UttarakhandHabitat, livelihood and social practice of the Bhotia, Tharu, Jaunsari, Buksa and RajiBhotia trans-Himalayan pastoralism and the trade routes of the Niti, Mana and Darma valleysUttarakhand's administrative chronology: division and district formation, and statehood in 2000Fifth Schedule areas, Tribes Advisory Councils and reservation for Scheduled Tribes

Common traps

Reading Scheduled Tribe status as a description of a community rather than an entry on a state-specific list, so the 'listed where, and when' half of the fact never gets stored.
Attaching the notification to the Uttarakhand government. The entry dates from 1967 and was made for Uttar Pradesh; the state itself was formed on 9 November 2000.
Holding the fact as a decade instead of a year. The options run 1967 to 1970, so a decade-level memory still leaves 1967, 1968 and 1969 alive.
Blurring the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group label into Scheduled Tribe notification. Buksa and Raji carry both, but PVTG is a later administrative classification layered on the same entry.
Assuming a community listed in a neighbouring state is listed here too. The Scheduled Tribes order is written state by state, so the home state is part of the fact.

Here the idea comes as a bare date — the year a named set of communities entered a State's Scheduled Tribes list.

The same holding also answers a pairing item that matches a tribe to its district, its habitat belt or its Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group status, and an Article 342 item on which authority may add a community to the list.

So store the five names, where each of them lives, and 1967 as the year attached to Uttar Pradesh.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2014_GS1_Q392014

Shared idea — a Scheduled Tribe entry is written for a particular State, so the home state is part of the fact. That question's first statement placed the Changpa in Uttarakhand, which is the reading its state-specific listing settles. What differs: UPSC tested where a named community lives, its pastoral economy and whether it is in the ST category; UKPSC asks only for the year the region's five communities entered the list, which is date recall and can be answered without any state-attribution reasoning.

UPSC_2026_GS1_Q822026

Same constitutional territory — the provisions that give Scheduled Tribes their standing, where the answer turns on reading each instrument precisely. What differs: that question works on the Schedules governing tribal areas in the north-eastern states and on tax exemptions available to some tribes, while this one works on the dating of a listing under Article 342 for a single state.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
Which pair of communities of Uttarakhand is classified among the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups?
- (a)Tharu and Jaunsari
- (b)Buksa and Raji
- (c)Bhotia and Tharu
- (d)Jaunsari and Bhotia
Answerb — Buksa and Raji. These are the two Uttarakhand communities carried on the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group list, a classification layered on top of, not in place of, their Scheduled Tribe entry.
(a), (c) and (d) each pair communities that are notified Scheduled Tribes of the state but are not on that PVTG list. Tharu, Jaunsari and Bhotia hold the Scheduled Tribe entry alone, which is a different label.
practice — not a real PYQ
After the President has issued the first notification specifying the Scheduled Tribes of a State, a community may be included in or excluded from that State's list by
- (a)a fresh notification issued by the President
- (b)a law made by Parliament
- (c)a resolution of the State Legislative Assembly
- (d)an order of the Governor of the State
Answerb — a law made by Parliament. Article 342(2) vests the power of inclusion in, and exclusion from, the notified list in Parliament, acting by law.
(a) fails because the President's power under Article 342(1) is exhausted on the first notification for that State. (c) fails because the State legislature has no power over the list.
(d) fails because the Governor's role under Article 342(1) is consultation before the original order, not amendment of it.
practice — not a real PYQ
In the year in which the Jaunsari, Tharu, Bhotia, Buksa and Raji were placed on the Scheduled Tribes list, the districts they inhabit formed part of which State?
- (a)Uttarakhand
- (b)Himachal Pradesh
- (c)Uttar Pradesh
- (d)Punjab
Answerc — Uttar Pradesh. The entry is dated 1967, and the separate hill state was formed only on 9 November 2000, under the Uttar Pradesh Reorganisation Act.
(a) fails on chronology: that state did not exist in 1967. (b) and (d) name other states of the northern belt; the districts in question were administered as part of Uttar Pradesh until the reorganisation of 2000.
practice — not a real PYQ
The Jaunsari of Uttarakhand are concentrated in which tract?
- (a)Jaunsar-Bawar in Dehradun district
- (b)The tarai belt of Udham Singh Nagar
- (c)The Niti and Mana valleys of Chamoli
- (d)The bhabar tract around Ramnagar
Answera — Jaunsar-Bawar in Dehradun district, the hill tract from which the community takes its name.
(b) describes the tarai country of the Tharu. (c) names the high Chamoli valleys of the Bhotia, on the old trans-Himalayan routes. (d) points to the bhabar belt on the Nainital side where Buksa settlements are found.