UPPSC 2022 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 41 of 150

Correct — B, A-3, B-4, C-2, D-1. Three of the four pairs are straightforward and true on any map: Manas Biosphere Reserve lies in Assam, on the Bhutan border along the Manas river (A-3); the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve is the Indian part of the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta in West Bengal (B-4); and the Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve occupies the Satpura range in Madhya Pradesh (D-1). The fourth pair, Nanda Devi–Uttar Pradesh (C-2), is the one that has to be read carefully, and it is the reason the code works out to (b). Nanda Devi is today in Chamoli district of UTTARAKHAND, not Uttar Pradesh — but List-II offers no Uttarakhand at all, and that omission is the signal. The question is drawn on the PRE-2000 map of India: Nanda Devi National Park was established in 1982 in what was then Uttar Pradesh, the biosphere reserve around it was notified in 1988 on the same territory, and Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh only on 9 November 2000 by the Uttar Pradesh Reorganisation Act (as Uttaranchal, renamed Uttarakhand in 2007). So the commission's key is defensible on the map the question implies, but a student answering from today's political geography would say Uttarakhand — and would be right about where the peak stands. Note the difference from UPPSC's own 2021 paper, which set the same reserve and matched it to Uttarakhand.

• (a)A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1 — This is the closest trap and differs from the key only in the first two pairs, which it swaps: it sends Manas to West Bengal and the Sundarbans to Assam. Manas is an Assam reserve — it sits against the Bhutan frontier in the Himalayan foothills and takes its name from the Manas river — while the Sundarbans mangrove delta lies at the seaward edge of West Bengal. Nanda Devi and Pachmarhi are placed as in the key, so a candidate who checks only the last two pairs will pick this by mistake.
• (c)A-2, B-1, C-3, D-4 — Not one pair survives. It puts Manas in Uttar Pradesh, the Sundarbans in Madhya Pradesh, Nanda Devi in Assam and Pachmarhi in West Bengal. Two of these are impossible on physical grounds alone: the Sundarbans is a coastal mangrove delta and Madhya Pradesh is landlocked, and Nanda Devi is a 7,800-metre Himalayan peak while Assam is a lowland valley State.
• (d)A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4 — This is the unshuffled 1-2-3-4 code that a guessing candidate falls back on, and it fails on every pair — Manas to Madhya Pradesh, the Sundarbans to Uttar Pradesh, Nanda Devi to Assam and Pachmarhi to West Bengal. The Sundarbans in Uttar Pradesh, a State with no coast at all, is enough on its own to strike it out.

A biosphere reserve is not a legal category of protected area in the way a national park or a wildlife sanctuary is. It is a designation under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme, notified by the Government of India over a large landscape that is zoned into a strictly protected core, a buffer where limited research and tourism are allowed, and a transition area where communities live and work. That is why a biosphere reserve usually contains one or more national parks inside it and is much larger than them — the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, for instance, encloses both the Nanda Devi National Park and the Valley of Flowers National Park. India has notified eighteen biosphere reserves; a subset of them, including Nanda Devi, Manas, Sundarbans and Nokrek, are also on UNESCO's World Network of Biosphere Reserves.

The examiner's real device here is a date, not a fact of geography. When a match-list of protected areas offers Uttar Pradesh but no Uttarakhand — or offers Madhya Pradesh but no Chhattisgarh, or Bihar but no Jharkhand — the list has been drawn from a pre-November-2000 source, and every pairing has to be read on that map. Recognising the missing State is faster than recalling four locations. Beyond that, the practical route to (b) is elimination on the two easy anchors: the Sundarbans can only be West Bengal, since no other State in the list has a coast, and Manas can only be Assam. Fixing those two kills (a), (c) and (d) at once and leaves (b) without any need to adjudicate the Nanda Devi pair.

• Nanda Devi (about 7,816 m, also cited as 7,817 m) stands in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand and is the highest mountain lying entirely within India; Kangchenjunga is higher but sits on the border with Nepal.
• Nanda Devi National Park was established in 1982 in what was then Uttar Pradesh, and the biosphere reserve around it was notified in 1988. Uttarakhand became a separate State only on 9 November 2000, under the Uttar Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2000 — which is why an older list can place Nanda Devi in Uttar Pradesh.
• Manas Biosphere Reserve — Assam, on the India–Bhutan border, notified 1989; Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve — West Bengal, notified 1989; Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve — Madhya Pradesh, in the Satpura range, notified 1999.
• Biosphere reserves are zoned into core, buffer and transition areas under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme; the core is legally protected, usually as a national park or sanctuary, while people continue to live in the transition zone.
• UPPSC's own 2021 Prelims paper set Nanda Devi in the same kind of match-list and paired it with Uttarakhand — the same reserve, the opposite State, because the two papers assume different maps.

• Answering a match-list of protected areas from today's map when the list itself is older. Scan List-II first: a list with Uttar Pradesh but no Uttarakhand, or Madhya Pradesh but no Chhattisgarh, is pre-2000 and must be read on the pre-2000 map.
• Treating a biosphere reserve as a synonym for a national park. The reserve is the larger MAB-designated landscape; the park is the legally notified core inside it, and the two can carry different names and different dates.
• Placing Pachmarhi in Maharashtra because of the Satpura range's east–west sweep. The Pachmarhi hill station and its biosphere reserve are in Hoshangabad/Narmadapuram country in Madhya Pradesh.

UPPSC returns to biosphere-reserve-to-State matching almost every cycle — it appeared in 2021, again in 2024, and in 2025 as a 'which pair is NOT correctly matched' item — so the eighteen reserves and their States are worth memorising as a block. UPSC has preferred a slightly different angle on the same list: it asks which name in a set is NOT a biosphere reserve at all, or matches reserves to States with a five-item List-II so that one State is left unused.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  When Nanda Devi National Park was established in 1982, it lay in which State ?

  • (a)Uttarakhand
  • (b)Himachal Pradesh
  • (c)Uttar Pradesh
  • (d)Jammu and Kashmir

  Answer(c) Uttar Pradesh — the park was notified in 1982 and the biosphere reserve around it in 1988, both on territory that was then part of Uttar Pradesh. Uttarakhand was created only on 9 November 2000, so option (a) describes where the park is today, not where it was created.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve lies in which mountain range ?

  • (a)Aravalli
  • (b)Vindhya
  • (c)Satpura
  • (d)Ajanta

  Answer(c) Satpura — the Pachmarhi Biosphere Reserve occupies the Satpura hills of Madhya Pradesh and takes in the Satpura National Park, the Bori Sanctuary and the Pachmarhi Sanctuary. Dhupgarh, at about 1,352 m near Pachmarhi, is the highest point of the Satpura range and of Madhya Pradesh.