UPPSC 2024 Prelims Q80: With reference to the Anti-Maoist operation that took place

Q: What is the answer to UPPSC 2024 Prelims Q80?

A. Correct — A, Only 2. The operation the paper is pointing to took place on 16 April 2024 in the Hapatola forest of the Chhotebethiya area, in Kanker district of Chhattisgarh — part of the Bastar division — and not in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. That makes statement 1 false. Statement 2 is accurate: it was a joint action by the Border Security Force and the District Reserve Guard, the two forces that operate together across northern Bastar, and 29 Maoists were killed, with 22 weapons recovered and three security personnel injured. It was the single largest anti-Maoist action in Chhattisgarh in years and was widely reported during the 2024 general election period. Since the question is written as a late-2024 current-affairs item and the exam was held on 22 December 2024, read 'April 2024' strictly — this is a dated event, and unlike a 'who holds the post' question its facts do not move with time. The reason statement 1 feels plausible is that Gadchiroli is genuinely a Left-Wing Extremism district and was the site of a famous earlier operation, in April 2018, in which about 40 Naxalites were killed across the 22-23 April twin encounters (an interim count of 37 was reported first). The examiner has borrowed the district from that older episode and attached it to the 2024 one. Two states, two operations, six years apart.

UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 80 of 150

Verified against the official question paper. Answer as per the official UPPSC answer key.

With reference to the Anti-Maoist operation that took place in April 2024, which of the following statements is/are correct ? 1. It took place in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. 2. The operation was launched by BSF and District Reserve Guards. Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

(a)Only 2
(b)Neither 1 nor 2
(c)Only 1
(d)Both 1 and 2

Answer

Why

Correct — A, Only 2. The operation the paper is pointing to took place on 16 April 2024 in the Hapatola forest of the Chhotebethiya area, in Kanker district of Chhattisgarh — part of the Bastar division — and not in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. That makes statement 1 false. Statement 2 is accurate: it was a joint action by the Border Security Force and the District Reserve Guard, the two forces that operate together across northern Bastar, and 29 Maoists were killed, with 22 weapons recovered and three security personnel injured. It was the single largest anti-Maoist action in Chhattisgarh in years and was widely reported during the 2024 general election period. Since the question is written as a late-2024 current-affairs item and the exam was held on 22 December 2024, read 'April 2024' strictly — this is a dated event, and unlike a 'who holds the post' question its facts do not move with time. The reason statement 1 feels plausible is that Gadchiroli is genuinely a Left-Wing Extremism district and was the site of a famous earlier operation, in April 2018, in which about 40 Naxalites were killed across the 22-23 April twin encounters (an interim count of 37 was reported first). The examiner has borrowed the district from that older episode and attached it to the 2024 one. Two states, two operations, six years apart.

Why the others are wrong

(b)Neither 1 nor 2 — Rejects statement 2 as well, but statement 2 is the accurate half of the pair. The 16 April 2024 operation was conducted jointly by the Border Security Force and the District Reserve Guard, and the naming of those two forces is precisely what the examiner expected candidates to recognise.
(c)Only 1 — Exactly inverts the truth. Statement 1 puts the operation in the wrong state altogether — Gadchiroli is in Maharashtra, while the April 2024 action was in Kanker district of Chhattisgarh, in the Bastar division. Getting the state wrong is the single error the question is built around.
(d)Both 1 and 2 — The most tempting choice, because statement 2 is right and a candidate who verifies it may accept the whole pair. But a correct second statement never rescues a false first one. Statement 1 names Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, and the operation was in Kanker, Chhattisgarh.

Concept

Left-Wing Extremism in India is fought by a layered force structure, and the two names in statement 2 sit on different layers of it. The District Reserve Guard is a district-level unit of the Chhattisgarh Police, raised locally so that its personnel know the forest, the dialects and the villages; it has become the spearhead of operations across the Bastar division. The Border Security Force is a Central Armed Police Force under the Ministry of Home Affairs, deployed away from the borders into Kanker and other LWE districts in aid of the State Government, alongside the CRPF and its specialised jungle-warfare arm, CoBRA. That division of labour follows the Constitution: public order and police are State subjects, so central forces work in support of a State's own police rather than in place of it, and a joint BSF-plus-DRG column is exactly what that arrangement produces on the ground. Maharashtra's Gadchiroli police run their own equivalent elite unit, the C-60 commandos.

UPPSC's current-affairs pairs are usually built the same way — one statement lifted correctly from the news report and one with a single detail swapped, most often a place. Here the swapped detail is the state itself, and the swap is a clever one because Gadchiroli is a real Left-Wing Extremism district with a real, famous operation attached to it. A candidate who only remembers 'a big anti-Maoist operation, April, many killed' will find Gadchiroli familiar and accept it. The defence is to read the geography before the numbers: the Bastar division of Chhattisgarh — Kanker, Bijapur, Sukma, Dantewada, Narayanpur — is where the bulk of large operations have occurred, and Gadchiroli is across the state border in Maharashtra. Then check the forces named, because that is often the half the examiner leaves true. Note also the exam-technique point: in a two-statement item, verifying one statement tells you nothing about the other, and the answer 'Both' should never be chosen simply because the statement you could check turned out to be right.

Key facts

The operation took place on 16 April 2024 in the Hapatola forest of the Chhotebethiya area, Kanker district, Chhattisgarh, in the Bastar division — not in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra.
It was a joint operation of the Border Security Force and the District Reserve Guard; 29 Maoists were killed, 22 weapons were recovered, and three security personnel were injured.
Gadchiroli in statement 1 points to a different episode — an April 2018 operation in Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, in which about 40 Naxalites were killed across the 22-23 April twin encounters (an interim count of 37 was reported first).
The District Reserve Guard is a district-level unit of the Chhattisgarh Police; the BSF is a Central Armed Police Force under the Ministry of Home Affairs deployed for anti-LWE duty in Chhattisgarh.
Police and public order are State subjects under the Seventh Schedule, which is why central armed forces operate in aid of the State Government and joint state-plus-central columns are the norm in LWE districts.

A hazy view across an unbroken green forest canopy in the Kanger valley, framed by broad out-of-focus leaves in the foreground, with a white waterfall spilling over a low rock scarp on the wooded ridge in the distance — Kanker, where the 16 April 2024 operation took place, lies in this same Bastar division. The closed sal canopy and broken terrain shown here are why operations in Bastar depend on locally recruited units such as the District Reserve Guard, which know the ground, working alongside central forces like the BSF.Image: Harminder singh saini · Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Study next

Left-Wing Extremism in India — the Naxalbari uprising of 1967, the formation of the CPI (Maoist) in 2004, and the shrinking geography of the affected districtsThe government's LWE response — the SAMADHAN doctrine, the Security Related Expenditure scheme, road and mobile-tower connectivity projects and fortified police stationsThe Central Armed Police Forces and their charters — CRPF and CoBRA, BSF, ITBP, SSB, CISF, NSG — and which ministry controls themPolice and public order as State subjects in the Seventh Schedule, and the constitutional basis for deploying central forces in a StateThe geography of Bastar — Abujhmad, the Indravati river and national park, Kanger Valley, and the districts of the division

Common traps

Assuming any large anti-Maoist operation must be in Gadchiroli. Gadchiroli is in Maharashtra; the 2024 operation was in Kanker district of Chhattisgarh.
Confusing the forces. The District Reserve Guard belongs to the Chhattisgarh Police, CoBRA is a CRPF unit, and C-60 is the Gadchiroli district police's commando force — three different things.
Marking 'Both' because the statement you could verify turned out to be true. In UPPSC's two-statement pairs one statement is very often correct precisely to make the false one look safe.

UPPSC compresses a year of security news into two-statement pairs and plants the error in a place name — a wrong district, a wrong state, a wrong city. UPSC almost never asks operation-level detail and comes at the same syllabus area institutionally: which force does what, under which ministry, under which entry of the Seventh Schedule.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2023_GS1_Q912023Open & attempt →

With reference to Home Guards, consider the following statements : 1. Home Guards are raised under the Home Guards Act and Rules of the Central Government. 2. The role of the Home Guards is to serve as an auxiliary force to the police in maintenance of internal security. 3. To prevent infiltration on the international border/coastal areas, the Border Wing Home Guards Battalions have been raised in some States. How many of the above statements are correct?

(a) Only one
(b) Only two
(c) All three
(d) None

Answer(b) Only two

The institutional half of the same syllabus area — which force sits where in India's internal-security architecture, and the fact that policing is a State responsibility with other forces acting as auxiliaries. That is the framework in which a state unit like the DRG operates alongside a central force like the BSF.

UPSC_2007_GS1_Q872007Open & attempt →

Which of the following is located in the Bastar region?

(a) Bandhavgarh National Park
(b) Dandeli Sanctuary
(c) Rajaji National Park
(d) Indravati National Park

Answer(d) Indravati National Park

Anchors the geography that statement 1 gets wrong. Bastar is in southern Chhattisgarh, and Kanker is a district of that division — placing Bastar correctly on the map is what stops a candidate from accepting Gadchiroli, Maharashtra.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The District Reserve Guard (DRG), frequently in the news for anti-Maoist operations, is a unit of which of the following?
- (a)Central Reserve Police Force
- (b)Border Security Force
- (c)Chhattisgarh Police
- (d)Indian Army
Answer(c) Chhattisgarh Police — the DRG is a district-level force of the state police, raised from local recruits; CoBRA is the CRPF's jungle-warfare unit and the BSF is a separate Central Armed Police Force.
practice — not a real PYQ
The anti-Maoist operation of April 2024 in which 29 Maoists were killed was conducted in which district?
- (a)Gadchiroli, Maharashtra
- (b)Kanker, Chhattisgarh
- (c)Sukma, Chhattisgarh
- (d)Malkangiri, Odisha
Answer(b) Kanker, Chhattisgarh — the operation was mounted on 16 April 2024 in the Hapatola forest of the Chhotebethiya area by the BSF and the District Reserve Guard; the Gadchiroli option recalls a different operation, in April 2018.