Question

Largest river basin in India is of ________.
a. River Godavari
b. River Kaveri
c. River Yamuna
d. River Ganga

Answer 1

Hint: A river basin is part of land which has been drained by a river and its tributaries. It comprises all the land surface divided and drained by the many streams of river that flow down the hill into each other. The larger the river by size and length, the larger the river basin.

Complete Answer:
There are many river or drainage basins in India which cover areas of two thousand to more than twenty thousand square kilometres. They are inter-state in nature and cover about eighty-one percent of geographical location of India.
The main and the largest river basin in India is the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin. It covers an area of about eleven lakh square kilometres. Ganga is also the longest river in India and is also considered the sacred most. The basin also extends to Tibet, Nepal and Bangladesh. To the north, lie the Great Himalayas creating a divide between Ganga and Brahmaputra. On the western side, the basin borders the Indus basin and also the Aravalli ridge. To the south, there are the Vindhyas and the Chota Nagpur plateau whereas on the east The Ganga merges with The Brahmaputra and eventually into the Bay of Bengal.
Let’s look at the given options now:
Option (a) River Godavari has the second largest river basin in India. So, this is an incorrect option.
Option (b) River Kaveri covers an area of around eighty thousand square kilometres which is way less than River Ganga’s basin. Thus, it is a wrong answer.
Option (c) River Yamuna is a tributary of The Ganga and covers a total of forty percent of The Ganga’s river basin. So, it is an incorrect answer.
Option (d) River Ganga is the correct answer as it has the largest river basin in India.
Option ‘d. River Ganga’ is correct.

Note: The Ganga basin accommodates a population of more than five hundred million making it the most populated river basin in the world. There are 11 Indian states that are part of this basin. They are: Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Delhi.