Geography of Rajasthan: RAS Prelims Questions from Six Papers, 2013–2024

RPSC key: (a) 10.4%

Independently verified. The Rajasthan Environment Department also gives 10.4%. The textbooks print 10.41% and the Resident Commissioner's office 11% — the square kilometres (342,239) are identical in all three; only the rounding differs. Give 10.4%, because that is what the examiner's own key says.

RPSC key: (b) Ser, Jarga, Sajjangarh, Taragarh

Ser is the second-highest peak in Rajasthan after Guru Shikhar (1,722 m). Option (3) is the trap and it swaps only Ser and Jarga — holding Ser's rank alone defeats both (3) and (4).

RPSC key: (d) Only A and D are correct.

B fails on the word all: the Chambal rises in Madhya Pradesh, not the Aravalli. C states the opposite of the truth — rainfall distribution is decisively affected by the Aravalli, which is why the range splits the state into an arid 60% and a fertile 40%. A statement offered in the negative is asking whether you can hold the positive.

RPSC key: (b) A, B and C

D is the only false statement and it fails on one word — all. The Aravalli is rich in metallic minerals, not in every type. Note that the same examiner set the Aravalli's mineral wealth as TRUE in 2016 (Q35, above) and FALSE here. The facts did not change; the qualifier did. The Nagaur uplands entry is worth understanding rather than memorising: inland drainage means water has no outlet to the sea, so it evaporates where it stands and leaves its salt — the salt lakes are the consequence of the drainage, not a separate fact.

RPSC key: (c) (A), (B) and (D)

RPSC key: (a) Mukandara hills

The Mukandara hills, in the Hadoti region, are the Vindhyan extension into Rajasthan. They give their name to the Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve in Kota. Girwa is the Udaipur basin and Alwar's hills are Aravalli, so both belong to a different system entirely.

RPSC key: (c) A, B, D, C

Spatial-ordering questions cannot be answered from a list; they need the map in your head. The recoverable anchors: Bundi is Hadoti, in the south-east; Ajmer is near the centre; Udaipur is south-west. The difficulty is only ever the final pair.

RPSC key: (a) (ii) (i) (iv) (iii)

Bhangarh is the recoverable one — the famous fort site in Alwar, which appears in the architecture chapter of the history unit. One anchor carried across from another subject collapses a four-way match into a three-way.

RPSC key: (c) Barmer

The Desert Triangle is Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jaisalmer. Barmer is the odd one out, despite being as thoroughly desert as any of them — the triangle is a tourism-circuit construct, not a physiographic one, which is exactly why the intuitive answer fails.

No valid answer — Officially deleted by RPSC — no valid answer exists.

The share of the Indian Thar lying in Rajasthan is given variously as about 60% and about 85% depending on how the desert's boundary is drawn, and two of the four options sit inside that spread. A superlative whose answer depends on an undefined boundary is not safely testable, and RPSC withdrew it. No answer is asserted here.

No valid answer — Officially deleted by RPSC — no valid answer exists.

The reason is the useful part: the north/central/south attribution of the Aravalli's minor peaks differs between standard Rajasthan geography textbooks. When its own sources disagree, the examiner withdraws the question. Treat this as an instruction not to spend revision time on minor-peak attribution.

RPSC key: (a) Banas

Every clause in the stem points one way. The Banas rises in the Aravalli near Kumbhalgarh, crosses the Mewar plain, and takes the Berach, Kothari and Morel as tributaries. It is the largest river lying wholly within Rajasthan — which is the fact behind the question, since the Chambal and Mahi both enter from outside.

RPSC key: (a) Banas, Mainal, Bedach

The Triveni Sangam of Rajasthan is the meeting of the Banas, Berach and Menali (Mainal), at Bigod in Bhilwara. Do not confuse it with the Triveni of Prayagraj — the name is generic and the rivers are entirely different.

No valid answer — Officially deleted by RPSC — no valid answer exists.

Drainage-area figures for the smaller west-flowing rivers differ between sources, and the question turns entirely on those figures. Withdrawn; no answer asserted.

RPSC key: (c) Ghadsisar – Bikaner

Gadsisar (Ghadsisar) is in Jaisalmer, not Bikaner — so pair (3) is the incorrect one the question is hunting. The others are sound: Kaylana at Jodhpur, Chand Baori at Abhaneri in Dausa, Gap Sagar at Dungarpur. Chand Baori also appears in the architecture chapter, where its dating is discussed.

RPSC key: (d) Sambhar Lake

Sambhar is the Ramsar site among the options — designated in 1990. Rajasthan has more than one Ramsar site: Keoladeo Ghana is also one, and was designated the same year. The question works only because Keoladeo is absent from the options, so do not read the key as saying Sambhar is the state's sole Ramsar wetland.

RPSC key: (c) Swaroop Sagar Lake

Swaroop Sagar is the exception among the options. The National Lake Conservation Plan covered Fateh Sagar and Pichola at Udaipur, Nakki at Mount Abu and Ana Sagar at Ajmer.

RPSC key: (c) Jaisalmer

Khadin is Jaisalmer's. A khadin is a run-off harvesting system — an earthen bund across a slope that traps sheet flow and the silt it carries, so the field is watered and manured in one action. It is the desert's answer to having no river, which is why it belongs to Jaisalmer rather than to a canal district.

RPSC key: (d) iii iv ii i

Rivers by district: Udaipur — Berach; Bundi — Mej; Bharatpur — Gambhir; Alwar — Sabi and Ruparel. The Sabi and Ruparel are the recoverable pair — both are Alwar's ephemeral north-eastern streams, and neither reaches the sea.

RPSC key: (d) western disturbances

Mawat is winter rain, and it comes from western disturbances* — extratropical systems arriving from the Mediterranean, not from any monsoon. It is agriculturally decisive out of all proportion to its quantity, because it waters the standing rabi crop. Any option naming a monsoon is wrong by definition: the monsoon and the western disturbance are opposite seasons and opposite mechanisms.

RPSC key: (d) Only (A)

Only (A). The May–June dust storms are driven by intense local convection over a heated desert surface. (B) is wrong on the geometry — the Aravalli runs south-west to north-east, so it lies across rather than parallel to those winds. The relief of the state is the reason (B) fails, which is why the physiography chapter repays learning first.

RPSC key: (d) (A) and (D)

This is the one question in the set where the key and the standard reference tables sit awkwardly together, and it is recorded rather than smoothed. The key accepts (A) Cwg — Bharatpur and (D) Aw — Dungarpur, and rejects (B) Bwhw — Barmer and (C) Bshw — Ganganagar. Standard Koeppen tables for Rajasthan do place Barmer in Bwhw, the hot desert type, which would make (B) defensible. We cannot resolve it and do not assert the key is wrong — Koeppen boundaries are drawn from rainfall and temperature thresholds that shift with the data period used, and a district near a class boundary can move. Learn (A) and (D), which are secure, and know that Bwhw–Barmer is widely printed.

RPSC key: (a) Dholpur, Rajsamand, Jalore

Rainfall in Rajasthan falls from south-east to north-west, and that single gradient answers most climate questions in this unit. Dholpur (east) > Rajsamand (centre-south) > Jalore (west) follows it exactly. Fix the gradient and you do not need the district figures.

RPSC key: (a) Jalore, Jaipur, Kota

The same gradient, asked in reverse. Ascending means driest first: Jalore (west) < Jaipur (centre) < Kota (south-east). One rule, two questions, eight years apart — which is the strongest argument for learning the gradient rather than the numbers.

RPSC key: (d) Alfisols

Alfisols dominate Jaipur, Dausa and Alwar — the red-to-yellow soils of the semi-arid eastern uplands. The four names in the options are USDA soil-taxonomy orders, and the exam has moved to that vocabulary; older material uses descriptive names such as red loam, which will not match an option.

RPSC key: (d) 4.87

Check the arithmetic, because it confirms the key: 16,654 ÷ 342,239 = 4.867%, which rounds to 4.87%. A percentage question with the absolute figure in the stem is a division you can perform in the exam hall — and none of the other options is within reach of it.

RPSC key: (b) Jodhpur

Jodhpur. The intuitive answer is Jaisalmer — the driest and most desert of the four — and it is wrong, which is the point of the question. Very dense forest is scarce everywhere in western Rajasthan, so the ranking among desert districts turns on small absolute areas rather than on which district feels most arid.

RPSC key: (d) February 2010

February 2010 — and note that Rajasthan's first State Forest Policy came more than three decades after the National Forest Policy of 1952 and two decades after that of 1988.

RPSC key: (a) Sirohi

Sirohi, because Mount Abu lies in it. Sub-tropical hilly forest requires altitude, and Abu is the only place in Rajasthan with enough of it — the same fact that makes Guru Shikhar the state's highest point.

RPSC key: (b) 2010

2010 — the Rajasthan Biological Diversity Rules were framed and the Rajasthan State Biodiversity Board established in the same year, under the central Biological Diversity Act, 2002.

RPSC key: (b) It covers 18 districts and 8 wild-life sanctuaries.

(2) is the incorrect statement, which the question asks you to select. The project is JICA-assisted, has developed the Abheda (Kota) and Machia (Jodhpur) biological parks, and includes water conservation — the district and sanctuary counts in (2) are what the key rejects.

RPSC key: (a) Shergarh – Bundi

Shergarh Wildlife Sanctuary is in Baran, not Bundi. The rest are sound: Bassi in Chittorgarh, Ramsagar Van Vihar in Dholpur, Sitamata in Pratapgarh. Baran and Bundi are both Hadoti districts, which is precisely why the swap is chosen.

RPSC key: (b) 4 3 2 1

Conservation reserves are a distinct legal category under the Wild Life (Protection) Act — not sanctuaries and not national parks — and RPSC has now set them in three separate years. Jorbeed Gadhewal is Bikaner and Gudha Vishnoi is Jodhpur.

RPSC key: (c) Nagaur

Gogelav is in Nagaur. This exact question has been repeated — it appears again in the 2023 paper — which makes the conservation-reserve list one of the highest-yield things to learn in this unit.

RPSC key: (c) Sorsan – Bundi

Sorsan is in Baran, not Bundi. The same Baran-for-Bundi substitution as the 2023 sanctuary question above. When an examiner finds a swap that works, it comes back — and here it came back within a year.

RPSC key: (c) Sawai Madhopur – Lion

Sawai Madhopur's mascot is the tiger, not the lion — Ranthambore is a tiger reserve and there are no lions in Rajasthan. The district-mascot scheme pairs each district with a species associated with it, so the answer is recoverable from what the district is famous for.

RPSC key: (b) Rohida

Rohida (Tecomella undulata), the desert teak. The state tree is the Khejri, the state animal the Chinkara (and the Camel as state livestock animal), and the state bird the Godawan — the Great Indian Bustard. All four have been examinable.

RPSC key: (c) 38.98

38.98% in 2021-22. Rajasthan is India's largest producer of bajra, and the share is the fact behind the question. Any figure of this kind needs its year attached — production shares move annually, and the stem supplies 2021-22 for exactly that reason.

RPSC key: (c) Maize and Bajra respectively

Mahi Kanchan is a maize hybrid and RCB 911 a bajra hybrid. The RCB prefix is the recoverable clue — the Rajasthan bajra hybrids carry it.

RPSC key: (a) Doomara, Ajmer

Doomara, Ajmer — the National Research Centre on Seed Spices (Tabiji, Ajmer). Pair it with the camel centre at Bikaner in the next question: RPSC sets the research-institute-to-city map repeatedly, and it is pure recall.

RPSC key: (c) A-(iii), B-(v), C-(iv), D-(i)

Centres of Excellence in horticulture are crop-specific and district-specific, which is what makes them matchable. This is recall with no derivable structure — either the list is learnt or the question is lost.

RPSC key: (c) Bikaner

Bikaner — the National Research Centre on Camel, which also appears in the tourist-places material of the history unit as a Bikaner attraction. The same institution is examinable as geography and as heritage.

RPSC key: (a) (iv) (i) (ii) (iii)

Match the project to its command area, not to where its dam stands. Jawai serves Pali and Jalore, Jakham serves Pratapgarh and Udaipur, Sidhmukh serves Hanumangarh and Churu, and the Narmada canal serves Jalore and Barmer — the only Rajasthan scheme fed by a river that never enters the state.

RPSC key: (b) Gujarat and Rajasthan

Gujarat and Rajasthan — two states, not three. The Mahi flows from Madhya Pradesh through Rajasthan into Gujarat, so MP is the plausible third name and is not a partner in the project. The river's course and the project's partners are different questions.

RPSC key: (a) Jhalawar, Baran and Kota district

Jhalawar, Baran and Kota — all three Hadoti. Parwan is a tributary of the Kali Sindh, so the command area follows the Hadoti drainage. Option (3) substitutes Bundi for Baran, which is the standard Hadoti swap seen elsewhere in this paper set.

RPSC key: (c) Jai Narayan Vyas lift canal, Dr. Karni Singh lift canal, Kanwarsen lift canal, Choudhary Kumbharam lift canal

A map-reading question. The Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojana lift canals raise water above the main canal's gravity command; the named lifts include Kanwar Sen, Jai Narayan Vyas, Dr Karni Singh and Chaudhary Kumbha Ram. The sequence follows the canal from south-west to north-east, so the map, not the list, is the thing to hold.

No valid answer — Officially deleted by RPSC — no valid answer exists.

The Jawai project's command area is usually given as Pali and Jalore, which would make more than one option defensible as not benefiting. The question was withdrawn rather than keyed, and no answer is supplied here.

RPSC key: (a) Hanumangarh-Jhunjhunu

Hanumangarh and Jhunjhunu. The Chaudhary Kumbha Ram lift canal carries IGNP water into the Shekhawati belt — the point of a lift canal being to serve country the main canal cannot reach by gravity.

RPSC key: (c) iii iii ii i

The printed option (3) reads iii iii ii i, which repeats iii and cannot be a valid code. It is almost certainly a typographical error in the paper for iii iv ii i. The key selects (3) regardless, and the intended matching is what is being tested. This page reproduces the option as printed rather than silently repairing it.

RPSC key: (c) Narmada Canal Project

The Narmada Canal Project — the first in Rajasthan to make sprinkler irrigation compulsory. The reason is the command area: Jalore and Barmer are sandy and water-scarce, so a scheme fed by an out-of-state river was designed for efficiency from the start.

RPSC key: (d) Lignite

Lignite — brown coal, the lowest rank after peat. Rajasthan has no bituminous or anthracite coal, so the option set is really asking whether you know the state's coal is young and low-grade. This underpins the lignite-field question of 2024 below.

RPSC key: (c) Kapurdi, Merta and Kasnau

The key gives Kapurdi, Merta and Kasnau. Note what is absent: Palana, in Bikaner, which is Rajasthan's oldest and best-known lignite field and appears in two of the rejected options. The key is defensible if most important means largest by reserves — the Barmer (Kapurdi–Jalipa) and Nagaur (Kasnau–Merta) fields are the big ones — but a candidate who reasoned from fame rather than reserves would have chosen an option containing Palana. The superlative is doing the work here, and this page records the tension rather than pretending the question is clean.

RPSC key: (d) Gypsum

Got-Manglodh, in Nagaur, is gypsum. Rajasthan is India's dominant gypsum producer, and Nagaur is the centre of it.

RPSC key: (a) Gypsum – Palana

Palana is lignite, not gypsum — so pair (1) is the wrong one. Palana recurs across this paper set (see the 2024 lignite question above), and knowing it as a lignite field answers both.

RPSC key: (b) Garnet

Janakpura and Sarwar (Ajmer) are garnet. Rajmahal is also garnet, which appears as a correct pair in the 2016 wrong-pair question above — the same mineral, two papers, two forms of question.

RPSC key: (d) C

Kherwara — asbestos is the correct pair. Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh are the significant asbestos producers in India, and Udaipur district is the Rajasthan centre.

RPSC key: (a) Manganese

Manganese. Banswara is the manganese district of Rajasthan, and these localities lie in it — which is the recoverable route if the individual place names are unfamiliar.

RPSC key: (a) Arjunpura and Piparda

Arjunpura and Piparda. Asbestos has now been set twice in four years (see the 2021 pairing question above), which makes it worth more attention than its economic weight suggests.

RPSC key: (d) Talwada

Talwara is not an iron-ore area. The iron-ore localities are Morija–Banol (Jaipur), Dabla–Singhana (Jhunjhunu) and Neemla–Rajpura (Dausa) — all in the north-eastern Aravalli, which is the pattern that identifies the outlier.

RPSC key: (d) (A), (C) and (D)

Lead and zinc, wollastonite and selenite — Rajasthan is effectively India's sole producer of all three. Copper is the exclusion, and it is the trap, because Khetri makes copper the mineral most associated with Rajasthan in the popular mind. Rajasthan is a major copper producer but not the only one — Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand also produce it. Sole producer and largest producer are different claims.

RPSC key: (a) iii iv ii i

Coal and gas localities by district: Kapurdi is Barmer, Matasukh is Nagaur, Tanot is Jaisalmer — Tanot being better known for its temple and the 1965 war than for gas. Kesardesar is Bikaner.

RPSC key: (c) Barmer-Sanchore basin

The Barmer–Sanchore basin. Rajasthan's crude oil is Barmer's, centred on the Mangala field — which is why the oil-field question below turns on Barmer names.

RPSC key: (c) Ganga

Ganga is not a Rajasthan oil field. Mangala, Bhagyam, Aishwariya, Saraswati and Raageshwari are — all in the Barmer basin. The Cairn discoveries were given Sanskrit names, which is exactly what makes a plausible-sounding invented name work as a distractor.

RPSC key: (b) Jhalawar

Kalisindh Super Thermal Power Station is at Jhalawar, on the Kali Sindh river. The river names the plant and the river is Hadoti's, so the district follows from the name if you know the drainage.

RPSC key: (b) Jaipur, Jodhpur, Alwar, Nagaur

Jaipur, Jodhpur, Alwar, Nagaur by total population, Census 2011. Alwar and Nagaur are the two that surprise — both are more populous than Udaipur, Kota or Bikaner, which are better known as cities. Population is a district total, not a city total, and that distinction is the whole question.

RPSC key: (b) Sri Ganganagar

Sri Ganganagar had the lowest decadal growth, 2001–2011. A canal-irrigated, relatively prosperous, largely settled district growing slowly is the demographic-transition pattern, and it contrasts with Barmer at the other end.

RPSC key: (b) Kota, Jaipur, Jhunjhunu, Sikar, Alwar

Kota, Jaipur, Jhunjhunu, Sikar, Alwar by total literacy, Census 2011. Kota above Jaipur is the fact that decides it — the coaching-city effect showing up in the literacy table.

RPSC key: (c) (i), (ii) and (iii) are correct.

Rajasthan's sex ratio in 2011 was 928 females per 1,000 males, below the national 943. The state has never reached the national figure in a modern census, which is the durable point behind whichever statement set is offered.

No valid answer — Officially deleted by RPSC — no valid answer exists.

Rural and urban sex ratios by district are published, but the highest-ranked district differs by whether the 2011 figures are read as published or as later revised. Withdrawn; no answer asserted.

RPSC key: (d) 31.15% and 24.87%

India 31.15%, Rajasthan 24.87% (Census 2011). Order matters and the options exploit it — (1) and (4) carry the same two numbers in opposite order. Rajasthan is markedly less urbanised than India as a whole, which is the fact to hold; the digits follow from it.

RPSC key: (b) 39.8% and 43.6%

India 39.8%, Rajasthan 43.6% (Census 2011). Rajasthan is ABOVE the national work participation rate, which runs against the intuition built by the urbanisation question above. Two ratios, opposite directions — and the examiner has set both.

RPSC key: (c) Bikaner and Nagaur

Bikaner and Nagaur have the lowest Scheduled Tribe percentages. The ST population of Rajasthan is concentrated in the south — Banswara, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh, Udaipur — so the lowest shares are in the north and west, which makes the answer derivable from the distribution rather than the table.

RPSC key: (c) Bikaner and Nagaur

The identical question, two years after the 2016 paper, with the same answer. Bikaner and Nagaur. Direct repetition at this level is uncommon enough to be worth noticing: the ST distribution is a settled, examinable fact and RPSC returns to it.

RPSC key: (c) Dungarpur District

Dungarpur is second. Banswara is first, at roughly three-quarters of its population, with Pratapgarh third. The question asks for second precisely because first is widely known.

RPSC key: (c) Sansi, Sahariya, Bhil, Garasiya

A map question on tribal concentration. The distribution to hold: Bhil in the south (Banswara, Dungarpur, Udaipur), Garasiya in the Sirohi–Pali hills, Sahariya in Baran alone, Meena across the east. Sahariya is the most locatable, being Rajasthan's only Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group and confined to Baran.

RPSC key: (a) Balara

Balara. The south-eastern shifting-cultivation vocabulary is examinable as a set — Chimata and Dajia are the Bhil practices of burning hill slopes and forest floor respectively, and they appear as distractors here.

RPSC key: (c) Godwar

The Godwar circuit. Godwar is the Pali–Sirohi tract between the Aravalli and the desert, which is why Mount Abu and Ranakpur — both in that belt — fall together. The tourism circuits are administrative groupings and do not always follow districts, so they must be learnt as their own list.

RPSC key: (c) A-(iii), B-(iv), C-(i), D-(ii)

Lalgarh is Bikaner, Tripura Sundari is Banswara, Gagron Fort is Jhalawar and Nakoda is Barmer. Three of the four appear in the architecture chapter of the history unit — Gagron as the water fort, Lalgarh among Bikaner's palaces, Nakoda among the Jain temples — so this is a geography question answerable from the culture unit.