UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 111 of 150

Correct — C, Badua. The Badua Dam is in Bihar, not Uttar Pradesh. It stands on the Badua river in Banka district, in the Bhagalpur division of south-eastern Bihar, and is an earthen dam of the order of 450 metres in length completed in the mid-1960s; it is a Bihar Water Resources Department irrigation scheme serving the Banka-Bhagalpur tract. Every other name on the list is a Uttar Pradesh work. Adwa Dam and Ahraura Dam are both in Mirzapur district, in the Vindhyan uplands south of the Ganga where UP's smaller storage schemes are concentrated, and Baghelkhand Dam is in Balrampur district in the eastern Terai. So the one that does not belong is Badua.

• (a)Adwa — Adwa Dam is in Uttar Pradesh — Mirzapur district, in the hilly Vindhyan tract south of the Ganga. It is one of the medium irrigation storages that UP has built on the small seasonal streams draining that plateau edge, so it cannot be the odd one out.
• (b)Ahraura — Ahraura Dam is also in Mirzapur district of Uttar Pradesh, taking its name from the town of Ahraura in the same district. Two of the four options therefore sit in a single UP district, which is exactly what makes the question harder than it looks — you cannot separate them by district, only by State.
• (d)Baghelkhand — This is the tempting wrong answer, and it is tempting for a reason that has nothing to do with the dam. Baghelkhand is the name of a historic region and plateau that lies largely in Madhya Pradesh, so the word itself pulls the mind out of Uttar Pradesh. The dam called Baghelkhand, however, is a Uttar Pradesh scheme in Balrampur district. A place name is not a location.

Uttar Pradesh has no single dominant dam-building river the way the Deccan States do; its water works fall into two very different families. In the great alluvial plain there is almost no gradient and no rock to anchor a high dam, so the State relies on barrages and canal headworks on the Ganga, Yamuna, Ghaghara, Gomti and Sharda. Real storage dams are pushed to the two margins: the Vindhyan uplands of the south-east (Sonbhadra, Mirzapur, Chandauli), where hard rock and narrow valleys allow reservoirs, and the Bundelkhand rivers of the south-west (Betwa, Ken, Dhasan). Adwa and Ahraura belong to the first of those belts. Bihar's water map is organised around a different problem — the flood-prone north Gangetic rivers coming off Nepal, and the smaller south-Bihar streams like the Badua that rise in the Chhotanagpur fringe and need storage for the dry season.

The whole difficulty of this question is that three of the four names are obscure medium-irrigation projects that no textbook lists, and the fourth carries a misleading regional label. The workable strategy is not to recall all four but to attack the one you can place. Badua is a river name from south Bihar, in the Banka-Bhagalpur country, and once you register that the answer follows. If nothing is recognisable, the second-best move is to resist the name trap: 'Baghelkhand' sounds like Madhya Pradesh and therefore looks like the answer, which is precisely why it is planted at (d). UPPSC repeatedly builds 'which is NOT in UP' items out of small, low-profile schemes rather than famous ones, because famous ones are easy — so expect to work from district names such as Mirzapur, Sonbhadra, Balrampur and Lalitpur rather than from headline projects.

• Badua Dam is in Bihar — on the Badua river in Banka district, an earthen dam of roughly 450 metres length completed in the mid-1960s, run as a Bihar irrigation scheme.
• Adwa Dam and Ahraura Dam are both in Mirzapur district of Uttar Pradesh, in the Vindhyan uplands south of the Ganga.
• Baghelkhand Dam is in Balrampur district of Uttar Pradesh, despite carrying the name of a region that lies mostly in Madhya Pradesh.
• Uttar Pradesh's storage dams cluster in the Vindhyan south-east and in Bundelkhand; in the alluvial plain the State works through barrages and canal headworks instead. Rihand Dam in Sonbhadra, which impounds Govind Ballabh Pant Sagar, is the largest of the storage works.

• Reading a regional name as a location — 'Baghelkhand' evokes Madhya Pradesh, but the dam of that name is in Balrampur district of Uttar Pradesh
• Assuming an unfamiliar name must be the answer; two of the four (Adwa, Ahraura) are equally unfamiliar and both are in UP, in the same district
• Mixing up Adwa and Ahraura, which are neighbours in Mirzapur and are routinely swapped in coaching material

UPPSC sets Uttar Pradesh geography as odd-one-out and pair-matching items built on small, low-profile schemes — 'which dam is NOT in UP', 'which pair of dam and district is wrongly matched'. UPSC prefers the national version, matching a reservoir to its State or its river, which is the same skill applied to a bigger list.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Rihand Dam, which impounds the Govind Ballabh Pant Sagar, is located in which district of Uttar Pradesh?

  • (a)Mirzapur
  • (b)Sonbhadra
  • (c)Lalitpur
  • (d)Balrampur

  Answer(b) Sonbhadra — the Rihand Dam stands on the Rihand river in Sonbhadra district, in the Vindhyan south-east of the State, and its reservoir is among the largest man-made lakes in India.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following statements about storage dams in Uttar Pradesh. Which one is correct?

  • (a)Most of UP's storage dams lie in the central alluvial plain, where the gradient is steep
  • (b)UP's storage dams are concentrated in the Vindhyan south-east and in Bundelkhand, while the alluvial plain is served mainly by barrages and canal headworks
  • (c)Uttar Pradesh has no storage dams at all and depends entirely on tube wells
  • (d)All the major dams of Uttar Pradesh are built on the main channel of the Ganga

  Answer(b) UP's storage dams are concentrated in the Vindhyan south-east and in Bundelkhand, while the alluvial plain is served mainly by barrages and canal headworks — the plain has neither the gradient nor the rock foundation for high dams.