Question

How many time zones are there in India?
A. One
B. Two
C. Three
D. Four

Answer 1

Hint: Indian Standard time (IST) is the time zone practical all over India, with a time offset of UTC+ $05:30$. India does not perceive daylight saving time or other seasonal modifications. In military and aeronautics time IST is nominated E* ("Echo-Star").

Complete step-by-step answer:
After Independence in 1947, the Union government recognized IST as the certified time for the entire nation, even though Kolkata and Mumbai reserved their own local time (known as Calcutta Time and Bombay Time) until 1948 and 1955, correspondingly. The Central station was moved from Chennai to a site at Shankargarh Fort in Prayagraj district so that it would be as close to UTC+ $05:30$ as possible. During the China–India War of 1962 and the Indo-Pakistani Wars of 1962 and 1971 Daylight Saving Time (DST) was used temporarily. The nation's east-west distance of more than 2,933 km covers over 29 degrees of longitude, resulting in the sun rising and setting nearly two hours at an earlier time on India's eastern boundary than in the Rann of Kutch in the far west. Residents of the north-eastern states have to enhance their clocks with the early sunrise and dodge the additional utilization of energy after daylight hours. In the late 1980s, a crew of academics propositioned dividing the nation into 2 or 3 time zones to preserve energy. The binary system that they recommended convoluted a reappearance of the British-era time zones; the commendations were not accepted. In 2001, the government founded a 4-member commission under the Ministry of Science and Technology to scrutinize the necessity for manifold time zones and daylight saving.

Thus, option (A) is correct.

Note: Department of Science and Technology (DST) specified that they are once again pursuing viability of 2 time zones for India in June 2017. Suggestions for producing an extra Eastern India Time (EIT at UTC+ $06:00$), moving default IST to UTC+ $05:00$ and Daylight saving commencing on April 14th (Ambedkar Jayanti) and the finale on October 2nd (Gandhi Jayanti) was presented to DST for deliberation.