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Lakes of India: asked and not asked.
UPSC has asked 16 of these 24. 8 came more than once. 8 have not come yet. Lock the repeated ones first, then read the rest.
First, the concept
Lakes form in many ways: glaciers (Himalayan tarns), river bends (ox-bow lakes), lagoons cut off by sand bars (Chilika, Pulicat), earth movements (Wular), a meteor hit (Lonar), or dams (man-made).
Fresh or salty depends on the outlet. A lake with no outlet in a dry area turns salty: Sambhar, Pangong Tso.
UPPCS asks the 'largest' and 'only' lakes, and lake–state pairs.
🔁 Asked again and again (8)
Tap a year to open that solved question.
Record lakes
- Loktak · Manipur; floating islands (phumdis); Keibul Lamjao, the only floating national park 5 times:20152015201520131988
- Kolleru · Andhra Pradesh, between the Godavari and Krishna deltas; freshwater 5 times:20232023201820142010
- Wular · Jammu and Kashmir, on the Jhelum; India's largest freshwater lake 4 times:2023202320101988
- Chilika · Odisha; India's largest brackish-water lagoon; Irrawaddy dolphins 3 times:200219991988
- Vembanad · Kerala; India's longest lake; the Nehru Trophy boat race 2 times:20022002
- Pulicat · Andhra Pradesh–Tamil Nadu; lagoon; Sriharikota lies by it 2 times:20172002
✅ Asked once (8)
Record lakes
- Sambhar · Rajasthan; India's largest inland salt lake 2004
Himalayan lakes
- Roopkund · Uttarakhand; the 'skeleton lake'
- Nainital, Bhimtal, Sattal · Kumaon lakes, Uttarakhand 2018
❌ Not asked by UPSC yet (8)
Items marked 'asked in UPPCS' have already come in the UP state exam, so examiners do use them.
Record lakes
- Lonar · Buldhana, Maharashtra; made by a meteorite impact asked in UPPCS
Himalayan lakes
- Dal · Srinagar; houseboats and floating gardens asked in UPPCS
- Pangong Tso · Ladakh–Tibet; brackish
- Tso Moriri · Ladakh; high-altitude Ramsar site
- Tsomgo (Changu) and Gurudongmar · Sikkim
Peninsula and west
- Hussain Sagar · Hyderabad; man-made
- Bhojtal (Upper Lake) · Bhopal; man-made, built by Raja Bhoj
- Pichola and Fateh Sagar · Udaipur
⚠️ Wular is the largest freshwater lake; Chilika is brackish; Sambhar is salt. Loktak is in Manipur, not Meghalaya.
'Asked' is checked against the solved UPSC questions on this site. 'Not asked yet' does not mean it will surely come.