Location, Area & Physical Regions of Punjab — Punjab Police previous year questions

Punjab is almost entirely a part of the great north-western alluvial plain built by the Sutlej, the Beas and the Ravi, and its land surface slopes gently from north-east to south-west. In the Shivalik foothills of Pathankot, Hoshiarpur and Ropar the ground stands at roughly 450 to 500 metres above sea level; it falls through the Bet and the upland plain to about 180 metres in the south-west near the Rajasthan border in Muktsar and Fazilka. Averaged over the state that works out to about 300 metres, which is the figure textbooks and the state gazetteer quote. Keeping the physical picture in mind is the way to avoid the distractors: 400 metres is roughly the foothill belt alone and 100 metres is below even the lowest part of the state, so neither can be the mean. For context, Punjab covers 50,362 square kilometres, about 1.53 per cent of India's area, is divided into three natural regions — Majha, Doaba and Malwa — and its highest point lies in the Shivalik hills of Pathankot district. Hence the answer is option 2.