Geography – India

Delhi Law Academy

LOCATION, DIMENSIONS AND FRONTIERS

Location

India is the seventh largest country in the world in terms of area—accounting for about 2.4% of total world area and also ranks second in terms of population. It lies in the northern hemisphere between 8°4′ N and 37°6′ N parallels of latitude and between 68°7′ E and 97°25′ E meridians of longitude and is part of the Asian continent. The

country can be divided into 6 zones—north, south, east, west, central and north-east zone. It has 28 states and 7 union territories.

India stands apart from the rest of Asia, marked off by mountains and the sea which give her distinct geographical entity. Bounded by the great Himalayas in the north, it stretches southwards and at the Tropic of Cancer (23° 30′ N) tapers off into the Indian Ocean between Bay of Bengal on the east and the Arabian Sea on the west. It is a country in South Asia that lies entirely on the Indian Plate in the northern portion of the Indo-Australian Plate.

Important Facts:

Distance from north to south3214 km
Distance from east to west2933 km
Length of coastline7516.6 km
Length of land frontier15,200 km
Total geographic land area32,87,263 km2
Percentage of earth’s surface covered by India2.40%
Percentage of world’s population living in India17.50%
Territorial Sea12 nm (nautical miles)
Contiguous Zone24 nm (nautical miles)
Exclusive Economic Zone200 nm (nautical miles)
Longest RiverGanga
Largest LakeLake Chilka
Highest PointMt. K2 (8611 m)
Highest Point of HimalayasKanchan Junga (8598 m)
Lowest PointKuttanad (-2 .2 m)
Northernmost PointSiachin Glacier near Karakoram
Southernmost PointIndira Point, Great Nicobar Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Westernmost PointWest of Ghur Mota, Gujarat
Easternmost PointKibithu, Arunachal Pradesh
Highest AltitudeKanchanjunga, Sikkim
Lowest AltitudeKuttanad, Kerala

International Boundaries Touching Indian States

Afghanistan 106 km1 state [Jammu and Kashmir (Pakistan occupied area)]
Bangladesh 4096 km5 states [West Bengal, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura, Assam]
Bhutan 699 km4 states [West Bengal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam]
China 4057 km5 states [Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh]
Nepal 1751 km5 states [Bihar, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim, West Bengal]
Myanmar4 states [Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram]
Pakistan 3323 km4 states [Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat]