Which of the following is not ‘ ghost-town’

Charkhari is the odd one out. It was a princely state in Bundelkhand, with its capital at the town of Charkhari in present-day Mahoba district, Uttar Pradesh. Its palaces and forts still stand, and the town is inhabited, so it is not a ghost town. It merged into the Indian Union after independence.

The other three are abandoned settlements:

• Kuldhara: a Paliwal Brahmin village in Jaisalmer district, Rajasthan, abandoned in the early nineteenth century and now a protected site with its ruins intact.
• Dhanushkodi: a port town at the tip of Pamban island near Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, destroyed by the 1964 cyclone and never resettled.
• Lakhpat: a former port on the Kutch coast in Gujarat, once prosperous on trade routes, now largely deserted as its port declined and the sea receded. It is widely described as a ghost town, though a small population remains.

Core concept: ghost towns arise from natural disaster, economic decline or displacement. For Mains GS-I, this links to urbanisation, coastal settlement and the impact of disasters on human habitation.

Trap: Lakhpat is often assumed to be fully abandoned like Kuldhara, so candidates pick the wrong one by elimination. The question hinges on Charkhari being a living town.