UKPSC Prelims 2025 General Studies Paper-I · Question 86 of 149

Correct — B, Almora.

G. W. Traill was the second Commissioner of Kumaon, following Edward Gardner, and he ran the division from Almora — the old Chand capital that the British kept as their hill headquarters after the Gorkha war.

That seat is what settles the item. The appointment of native doctors in 1833 was an act of the Commissioner's administration, and it is at Almora that the measure is recorded.

So what to fix is the fact itself, not a rule for reading questions: Almora held the Commissioner's office, treasury and courts, which is why this measure sits there.

• (a)
  Nainital — Nainital as a town dates from 1841 — eight years after the year in the stem — when P. Barron, a sugar trader from Shahjahanpur, built the first European house, Pilgrim Lodge, above the lake.

  So Nainital answers the hill station founded by P. Barron in 1841, and questions on the town that later served as the summer seat of the United Provinces government. It sits in a later chapter than Traill's 1833 measure.

• (c)
  Dehradun — Dehradun lies in the Doon valley on the Garhwal side, while the establishment Traill commanded — the office through which such appointments were made — was based at Almora.

  Dehradun answers the seat of the Forest Research Institute, founded in 1906, and the interim capital of Uttarakhand since the state's creation in 2000. Those markers belong to a period well after 1833.

• (d)
  Srinagar — Srinagar on the Alaknanda is a Garhwal town, and the headquarters of Traill's division — where the 1833 appointment of native doctors is recorded — was Almora.

  Srinagar answers the Panwar capital of Garhwal on the Alaknanda: Ajay Pal shifted the capital from Chandpur Garhi to Devalgarh and then to Srinagar in the early sixteenth century. That is a different kingdom and an earlier era than a Company-period measure of 1833.

After the Anglo-Gorkha war, Kumaon was taken over by the East India Company and governed as a non-regulation tract: instead of the layered revenue-and-judicial machinery of the regulation provinces, one officer, the Commissioner of Kumaon, held revenue, judicial and executive authority together.

For Kumaon that office sat at Almora, the Chand capital the British took over, and the division's revenue, judicial and executive business was transacted there — the 1833 appointment of native doctors included.

Traill's charge was wider than Kumaon proper, though. It took in British Garhwal, whose headquarters was at Srinagar until it moved to Pauri in 1840, so Almora is the seat of the division rather than a rule that fits every place in his jurisdiction.

• Traill was the second Commissioner of Kumaon, taking charge in 1816 after Edward Gardner and holding the office until 1835.
• G. T. Lushington, J. H. Batten and Henry Ramsay were among the officers who held the Kumaon commissionership after Traill.
• Almora was the capital of the Chand kingdom before the Gorkha occupation and was retained by the British as the divisional headquarters.
• Kumaon was administered as a non-regulation tract, with revenue, judicial and executive powers combined in the Commissioner.
• Traill carried out a series of land revenue settlements of Kumaon during his commissionership.
• A high pass in the Kumaon Himalaya that Traill crossed carries his name, Traill's Pass.
• Nainital was founded in 1841 with the building of Pilgrim Lodge by P. Barron.
• Ajay Pal shifted the Garhwal capital from Chandpur Garhi to Devalgarh and then to Srinagar on the Alaknanda in the early sixteenth century.
• The Forest Research Institute was established at Dehradun in 1906.

• Letting Dehradun feel like the natural administrative answer because the state government sits there today; that arrangement dates from the creation of Uttarakhand in 2000, not from Traill's time.
• Ignoring the year in the stem: 1833 falls before Nainital's founding in 1841, so the date alone separates the two options.
• Sliding a Garhwal place-name into a Kumaon administrative question — Srinagar's importance is as a Garhwal capital, not as a commissioner's seat.
• Memorising Traill as a mountaineering name because of Traill's Pass, and then forgetting that his civil measures run through the office at Almora.
• Guessing by present-day size or fame of the towns instead of by what each place was in the 1830s.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who took charge as the second Commissioner of Kumaon in 1816, after Edward Gardner?

  • (a)G. T. Lushington
  • (b)George William Traill
  • (c)Henry Ramsay
  • (d)J. H. Batten
  Answerb — Traill succeeded Edward Gardner in 1816 and held the Kumaon commissionership until 1835, the tenure in which the 1833 appointment of native doctors at Almora falls.

  Lushington, Batten and Ramsay each held the office after Traill, so none of them can be the officer who took charge in 1816.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The hill station of Nainital dates from 1841, when the first European house, Pilgrim Lodge, was built there by

  • (a)P. Barron
  • (b)George William Traill
  • (c)Sudarshan Shah
  • (d)Henry Ramsay
  Answera — P. Barron, a sugar trader from Shahjahanpur, built Pilgrim Lodge in 1841, and the town grew from that settlement. Traill's work belongs to Almora and the Kumaon administration; Sudarshan Shah was the ruler of Tehri Garhwal on the other side of the region; Ramsay's commissionership came later in the century.
• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs is correctly matched?

  • (a)Nainital — capital of the Chand kingdom
  • (b)Srinagar — Garhwal capital shifted there from Chandpur Garhi
  • (c)Dehradun — headquarters of the Kumaon Commissioner under Traill
  • (d)Almora — hill station founded by P. Barron in 1841
  Answerb — Ajay Pal moved the Garhwal capital from Chandpur Garhi to Devalgarh and then to Srinagar on the Alaknanda in the early sixteenth century, so this pair holds.

  Almora, not Nainital, was the Chand capital, which breaks (a); Traill's headquarters was Almora, not Dehradun, which breaks (c); and the 1841 Pilgrim Lodge foundation belongs to Nainital, not Almora, which breaks (d).