Geography — PPSC previous year questions

The Radcliffe Line is the boundary between India and Pakistan. Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew it as chairman of the two Boundary Commissions. They partitioned Punjab and Bengal in August 1947. The Bengal part is now the India–Bangladesh border. The Durand Line separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. The McMahon Line marks the India–China boundary in the eastern sector.

The Ten Degree Channel, lying roughly along latitude 10° N, separates the Andaman Islands (north) from the Nicobar Islands (south). The Eight Degree Channel separates Minicoy from the Maldives, and the Nine Degree Channel separates Minicoy from the rest of Lakshadweep. Nicobar and Sumatra are separated by the Great Channel (Six Degree Channel).

Going up from the surface: troposphere (all weather; up to about 8–18 km), then stratosphere (ozone layer; up to about 50 km). Then mesosphere (up to about 80 km) and thermosphere (ionosphere; above 80 km). The exosphere lies beyond. Temperature falls in the troposphere, rises in the stratosphere, falls again in the mesosphere and rises in the thermosphere.

The Tropic of Cancer (23 1/2° N) crosses eight Indian states: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tripura and Mizoram. Uttar Pradesh lies wholly north of the line.

Majuli is the world's largest inhabited river island. It lies in the Brahmaputra river in Assam. It became India's first island district in 2016. It is the seat of the Vaishnavite satras founded in the tradition of Srimanta Sankardeva. It is famous for its mask-making and monastic culture. River erosion is shrinking it steadily.

These are all glaciers. Baltoro (63 km) and Biafo (67 km) lie in the Karakoram range. Lolofond is a tributary of the Siachen glacier in Ladakh. Chhota Shigri is a well-studied benchmark glacier in the Chandra valley of Lahaul-Spiti, Himachal Pradesh. Other important Indian glaciers are Siachen (the longest, 76 km), Gangotri, Zemu, Milam and Pindari.

Nanda Devi (7,816 m) is the highest peak lying entirely within India. It stands in the Kumaon Himalayas of Uttarakhand. That section runs between the Satluj and the Kali rivers. The Punjab Himalayas lie between the Indus and the Satluj. The Nepal Himalayas lie between the Kali and the Teesta. The Assam Himalayas lie east of the Teesta.

A solar eclipse can happen only at the New Moon. Then the Moon lies between the Sun and the Earth, so its shadow can fall on the Earth. At Full Moon the Earth lies between the Sun and the Moon. That is when a lunar eclipse may happen. Eclipses do not occur every month, because the Moon's orbit is tilted about 5° to the ecliptic.

Kangchenjunga (8,586 m), on the Sikkim–Nepal border, is the highest peak within the territory India administers and the third highest in the world, so it is the answer here. K2 (8,611 m) lies in Gilgit-Baltistan, which India claims but Pakistan administers, and some papers (including a 2026 PPSC sitting) therefore rank K2 as India's highest peak. Mount Everest is in Nepal, Nanga Parbat in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Nanda Devi (7,816 m) is the highest peak lying entirely within India.

Meridians of longitude are farthest apart at the Equator, about 111 km per degree. They converge and meet at the Poles. So the distance between two meridians decreases steadily as one moves poleward. It falls with the cosine of the latitude — about 55.8 km per degree at 60°, zero at 90°. Parallels of latitude, by contrast, remain roughly equidistant.