UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q54: Which of the following is incorrectly matched about Central

Q: What is the answer to UKPSC Prelims 2025 Q54?

D. Correct — D, Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research – Haldwani. The pairing **Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research – Haldwani** is the one that breaks. The ICAR coldwater fisheries institute works from Bhimtal, a lake town in Nainital district, about 30 km up the hill from Haldwani and 22 km from Nainital. The name printed in the option is the older one: the body was the Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research from 2001 until February 2025, when it became the ICAR-Central Institute of Coldwater Fisheries Research (ICAR-CICFR). The town did not change. The other three pairings hold. The Archaeological Survey of India runs a Dehradun Circle for Uttarakhand, the National Institute of Hydrology is at Roorkee, and the Forest Research Institute is at Dehradun. The siting logic is the shortcut worth carrying: **coldwater fisheries research has to sit where the water stays cold**, so it belongs at a hill lake such as Bhimtal rather than in the plains belt at Haldwani.

UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 54 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 is incorrectly matched about Central Government Institutes located in Uttarakhand?

(a)Archaeological Survey of India – Dehradun
(b)National Institute of Hydrology – Roorkee
(c)Forest Research Institute – Dehradun
(d)Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research – Haldwani

Answer

Why

Correct — D, Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research – Haldwani.

The pairing Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research – Haldwani is the one that breaks. The ICAR coldwater fisheries institute works from Bhimtal, a lake town in Nainital district, about 30 km up the hill from Haldwani and 22 km from Nainital.

The name printed in the option is the older one: the body was the Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research from 2001 until February 2025, when it became the ICAR-Central Institute of Coldwater Fisheries Research (ICAR-CICFR). The town did not change.

The other three pairings hold. The Archaeological Survey of India runs a Dehradun Circle for Uttarakhand, the National Institute of Hydrology is at Roorkee, and the Forest Research Institute is at Dehradun.

The siting logic is the shortcut worth carrying: coldwater fisheries research has to sit where the water stays cold, so it belongs at a hill lake such as Bhimtal rather than in the plains belt at Haldwani.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Archaeological Survey of India – Dehradun — This pairing is sound. ASI maintains a Dehradun Circle, its field organisation for Uttarakhand, so an ASI office is indeed located in the state.
Picking it would be right only if the stem asked which of these bodies has its head office outside Uttarakhand — ASI is headquartered in New Delhi, under the Ministry of Culture.
The Survey-named body headquartered at Dehradun is Survey of India, the national mapping agency, and mixing the two survey names is what makes this option feel unsafe.
(b)
National Institute of Hydrology – Roorkee — This pairing is correct. NIH sits at Roorkee in Haridwar district and works under the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti.
It is the right answer to a question asking which central water-research institute is based at Roorkee.
Roorkee carries more than one central body — IIT Roorkee and CSIR's Central Building Research Institute are there too — so seeing another famous name attached to the town is no reason to reject this pair.
(c)
Forest Research Institute – Dehradun — This pairing is correct, and it is the least disputable of the four. FRI has stood at Dehradun since 1906 and functions under the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
It is the right answer to any question on India's premier forestry research institute and the city it occupies.
Its colonial-era main building is a Dehradun landmark, which is a useful anchor when a match list puts several institutes in the same city.

Concept

Uttarakhand hosts a dense cluster of Government of India research bodies, and each one's address often follows from what it studies.

Forestry, mapping and Himalayan geology gathered at Dehradun; water and building engineering at Roorkee; hill agriculture, mountain environment and coldwater fisheries in the Kumaon hills.

An institute-location item is really a test of that logic, plus the separate question of where a national body's headquarters sits as against a regional office.

Dehradun and Roorkee grew as British-era scientific and engineering stations, and the establishments founded there stayed on after 1947 — much of why a hill state carries so many central bodies.

For a state services paper this sits in Uttarakhand static general studies: the institutes, their host towns, and the ministry or council each answers to.

Key facts

The ICAR coldwater fisheries institute is at Bhimtal in Nainital district, roughly 30 km from Haldwani and 22 km from Nainital.
It was established in 1987 at Haldwani as the National Research Centre on Coldwater Fisheries and then shifted to Bhimtal.
It was upgraded to the Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research in 2001 and to ICAR-Central Institute of Coldwater Fisheries Research (ICAR-CICFR) in February 2025.
The Archaeological Survey of India is headquartered at New Delhi under the Ministry of Culture and operates a Dehradun Circle for Uttarakhand.
The National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, functions under the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti.
The Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, dates from 1906 and comes under the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, MoEFCC.
Survey of India, the national mapping agency, has its headquarters at Dehradun.
Roorkee also houses IIT Roorkee and CSIR's Central Building Research Institute.

Central institutes in Uttarakhand — the pair as printed vs. where it actually sits

Archaeological Survey of India→Dehradun Circle (head office at New Delhi)

National Institute of Hydrology→Roorkee, Haridwar district

Forest Research Institute→Dehradun, since 1906

Directorate of Coldwater Fisheries Research→Bhimtal, not Haldwani

Survey of India→Dehradun — headquarters

The fourth row is the pairing the stem plants as wrong. The fifth row is not one of the options; it is added to show which Survey-named body has its headquarters at Dehradun.

Study next

Dehradun's cluster of central bodies: Survey of India, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Wildlife Institute of India, CSIR-Indian Institute of PetroleumRoorkee's central bodies: IIT Roorkee, CSIR-Central Building Research Institute, National Institute of HydrologyICAR in the Kumaon hills: Vivekananda Parvatiya Krishi Anusandhan Sansthan at Almora and the IVRI campus at MukteshwarG. B. Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment at Kosi-Katarmal, AlmoraTraining academies in the state: LBSNAA Mussoorie and the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, DehradunWhich ministry, council or department each of these bodies reports to

Common traps

The stem hunts for the pair that is wrong, so the three sound pairings are the ones to reject; reading it as 'which is correctly matched' flips the answer.
Haldwani is Nainital district's largest plains town and was where the institute began in 1987, so a pairing that names it reads as plausible even though the campus is now up the hill at Bhimtal.
ASI's Dehradun Circle is a field office, not a head office; judging that pair against the New Delhi headquarters makes a valid pairing look broken.
Survey of India and Archaeological Survey of India are easy to blur; the Dehradun headquarters belongs to Survey of India, while ASI's head office is at New Delhi.
Several central institutes share Dehradun, so a name tied to that city cannot be dismissed merely because a more famous one is there.

Institute-and-location comes up as a plain one-liner ('where is X located'), as a four-pair match list with codes, and in this inverted form where one pairing is planted wrong.

The inverted form asks more of you, because three correct pairs have to be held steady while the fourth is isolated.

A related line of questioning moves from the town to the parent body — which council, department or ministry the institute answers to.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2004_GS1_Q912004

Same underlying skill — holding an institute against the city it occupies — run as a four-pair match list with codes (Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, ARCI, SACON, Tropical Forestry Research Institute against Mumbai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Jabalpur). What differs is the scope and the direction of the task: that item spreads across the country and asks for the correct combination, while the UKPSC item stays inside one state and asks which single pairing is wrong.

UPSC_2006_GS1_Q1112006

Same recall of a central research establishment and its town — the Central Water and Power Research Station at Khadakwasla. What differs is the form and the geography: it is a direct one-line 'where is X located' with a single pair to judge and no planted mismatch, and the institute lies outside Uttarakhand.

HPSC_2021_MAINS_GSI_Q82021

Same device rather than the same content: four pairs are offered, one is planted wrong, and the task is to isolate it. What differs is the subject matter entirely — that item pairs nineteenth-century uprisings with leaders and years, so the check is on a historical association rather than on an institute's address, and it comes from a Mains paper of another state commission.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The ICAR institute devoted to coldwater fisheries research in Uttarakhand is located at:
- (a)Bhimtal
- (b)Haldwani
- (c)Kotdwar
- (d)Ranikhet
Answera — The institute stands at Bhimtal, a lake town in Nainital district, which is what makes cold water available for its breeding and aquaculture work on mahseer and other hill-stream fish.
Haldwani (b) is not an invention: ICAR set the institute up there in 1987, before the move up the hill to Bhimtal. The town belongs to the institute's history, but not to its present address.
Kotdwar (c) lies in Pauri Garhwal at the Bhabar edge of the Garhwal hills, and Ranikhet (d) is a cantonment town in Almora district. The address to carry into the exam is the current one, Bhimtal.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following organisations has its headquarters at Dehradun?
- (a)Geological Survey of India
- (b)Survey of India
- (c)Archaeological Survey of India
- (d)Botanical Survey of India
Answerb — Survey of India, the country's national mapping and surveying agency, is headquartered at Dehradun. Of the four Survey-named bodies offered here, the Dehradun address belongs to the mapping one.
The Geological Survey of India (a) and the Botanical Survey of India (d) are both headquartered at Kolkata.
The Archaeological Survey of India (c) has its head office at New Delhi under the Ministry of Culture; it runs a Dehradun Circle for Uttarakhand, but a circle office is not a headquarters.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following pairs of a central institute and its location in Uttarakhand is correctly matched?
- (a)Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology – Dehradun
- (b)Central Building Research Institute – Nainital
- (c)Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration – Almora
- (d)CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum – Haridwar
Answera — The Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, the autonomous body that studies the geology of the Himalaya, is at Dehradun, so this pair is correctly matched.
The Central Building Research Institute (b) is a CSIR laboratory at Roorkee, not Nainital. The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (c) is at Mussoorie, in Dehradun district, not at Almora.
The CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum (d) is at Dehradun, not Haridwar. Three of the four pairs shift the institute to another town in the state, which is how this kind of item is built.