Consider the following statements: 1. In India, the Himalayas are spread over five States only. 2. Western Ghats are spread over five States only. 3. Pulicat Lake is spread over two States only. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Only statement 3 is correct, so the answer is B. Pulicat Lake, India's second-largest brackish water lagoon after Chilika, lies between Andhra Pradesh (Nellore district) and Tamil Nadu (Thiruvallur, with the barrier island in Tamil Nadu). Two states, so statement 3 holds.

• Statement 1 is wrong. The Himalayas run through far more than five units: Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh (a UT since 2019, still Himalayan terrain), Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, plus Himalayan parts of West Bengal and Assam depending on how the ranges are counted.
• Statement 2 is wrong. The Western Ghats cover six states: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The core concept is the spatial extent of physiographic features. It links to Environment, since the Western Ghats are a biodiversity hotspot and parts of them are a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2012), and to Mains questions on monsoon rainfall and peninsular rivers.

Trap: aspirants recall "five" from general trivia and mark statement 2 as correct, then choose A or C.