ALLAHABAD: DABAHALLA: VARANASI:?

The correct answer is D. The pattern is a simple reversal of letters. ALLAHABAD written backwards gives DABAHALLA, so the same operation applied to VARANASI gives ISANARAV.

Write VARANASI from the last letter to the first: I, S, A, N, A, R, A, V. That gives ISANARAV, which is option D.

• A (ISARANAVA): Wrong. It has nine letters, adding an extra A, so it is not a reversal of the eight-letter word.
• B (ISAVARAN): Wrong. The letters are jumbled and do not follow the reverse order.
• C (ISANRAAV): Wrong. The middle letters are out of place (R and A swapped), so it is a near miss rather than the true reverse.

Core concept: letter-reversal analogy, where one operation is applied uniformly to the whole word. Reasoning this precisely is the same discipline you need when reading legal and administrative texts, where one swapped term changes the meaning. Note that Allahabad was renamed Prayagraj in 2018; the puzzle uses the name as it stood in the exam.

Trap: Aspirants try to shift letters by a fixed code (such as +1 or -1) instead of first checking whether the word is simply reversed. Always test the simplest operation on the given pair first.