Who was the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal at the time of Partition of Bengal?

The answer is A) Henderson Leith Fraser, the full name of Sir Andrew Henderson Leith Fraser, who was Lieutenant Governor of Bengal from 1903 to 1908. Partition was announced by Lord Curzon's government in 1905, and it was carried out in October 1905 while Fraser held the Bengal post.

• B) H.H. Risley: Wrong. Risley was Home Secretary to the Government of India and an architect of the partition scheme, but he never held the Lieutenant Governor's post.
• C) Bodirik: Wrong. This name has no place in the partition-era administration of Bengal.
• D) A. T. Arundale: Wrong. Arundale was a civil servant of the Madras side, not the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal.

The core concept is the distinction between the old Bengal Presidency, headed by a Lieutenant Governor, and the new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, headed by Bampfylde Fuller. For Mains, this links to the partition as a trigger for the Swadeshi movement and to the later 1911 annulment and the shift of the capital to Delhi.

Trap: Aspirants pick Bampfylde Fuller because he was the first Lieutenant Governor of the newly created Eastern Bengal and Assam. Read the question carefully: it asks about Bengal, not the new province.