New Delhi is the correct answer and serves as the capital of the Republic of India. It is a planned city within the larger National Capital Territory of Delhi, designed primarily by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, and it was formally inaugurated as the capital in 1931, replacing Calcutta (now Kolkata), which had served as the capital of British India until 1911. New Delhi houses the three pillars of India's democracy in close proximity: the Rashtrapati Bhavan (President's residence), the Parliament House (Sansad Bhavan), and the Supreme Court of India, making it the undisputed administrative and political nerve centre of the country. Mumbai, the first distractor, is India's financial and commercial capital, home to the Bombay Stock Exchange and Bollywood, but it holds no constitutional status as the national capital. Kolkata was historically significant as the capital of British India until the shift to Delhi in 1911, yet it functions today only as the capital of West Bengal state. Chennai, similarly, is a major port city and the capital of Tamil Nadu, not of the country. A common exam trap is candidates writing simply 'Delhi' as if it were interchangeable with 'New Delhi'; while colloquially used together, New Delhi specifically denotes the smaller municipal capital district within the broader Delhi NCT, and exam-setters occasionally test this precise distinction in advanced papers. Another frequent confusion arises between the historical capital (Calcutta) and the current one, especially in questions framed around the 1911 Delhi Durbar, when King George V announced the transfer of the capital.
