Question

The easternmost longitude of India is ____________.
A) ${97}^{\circ }{25}^{\prime }\text{E}$
B) ${68}^{\circ }{7}^{\prime }\text{E}$
C) ${77}^{\circ }{6}^{\prime }$
D) ${82}^{\circ }{32}^{\prime }\text{E}$

Answer 1

Hint:
India is a vast country and is one of the ancient civilizations in the world. During the last five decades, it has achieved multifaceted socio-economic progress in various fields of technology, agriculture, etc.

Complete Answer:
The mainland extends between latitudes $8^{\circ }{4}^{\prime }\text{N}$and ${37}^{\circ }{6}^{\prime }\text{N}$ and longitudes ${68}^{\circ }{7}^{\prime }\text{E}$ and ${97}^{\circ }{25}^{\prime }\text{E}$ i.e. the westernmost longitude is ${68}^{\circ }{7}^{\prime }\text{E}$ while the easternmost longitude is ${97}^{\circ }{25}^{\prime }\text{E}$. By the tropic of cancer (${23}^{\circ }{30}^{\prime }\text{N}$), the country is divided into almost two equal parts. The Andaman and Nicobar lie to the southeast of the mainland while the Lakshadweep Islands lie to the southwest of the mainland. There could be wide differences in local time of places located at two extreme points of India, about${29}^{\circ }$, due to the great longitudinal extent of east-west ends. Thus, the difference in time between these two points would be about two hours from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh. Thus, it is very important to adopt the local time of some Central Meridian as the standard time for the country. Hence, the longitude of ${82}^{\circ }{30}^{\prime }\text{E}$ is considered as the standard time for the whole country which is known as the Indian Standard Time (IST).

Thus, option (A) is correct.

Note:
Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa are the states through which the Standard Meridian of India passes. Within a certain geographical area, instead of using solar time or a locally chosen meridian to establish a local mean time standard, the Standard time is referred to as the synchronization of clocks to a single standard time.