Watan Jagirs were given by Akbar to which of the following chiefs?

Under the Mughal administrative system, a mansabdar was normally assigned a transferable jagir — revenue rights over territory that could be reassigned periodically. A watan jagir was the exception: when a Rajput ruling chief entered Mughal service, his own ancestral homeland (watan) was confirmed to him as his hereditary jagir instead of being transferred elsewhere, in return for loyalty and military service to the empire.

Akbar pioneered this Rajput-integration policy, most clearly documented with houses such as the Kachhwaha rulers of Amber, whose homeland was confirmed to them as a watan jagir once they entered Mughal service. The Sisodiya house of Mewar is a distinct case: under Rana Pratap, Mewar resisted Akbar through virtually his entire reign, and its ruler Amar Singh reached a settlement with the Mughals only under Akbar's successor, Jahangir, in 1615. This question is an official CTET Paper 2 (2024) PYQ, and its officially keyed answer is 'Sisodiya Rajputs' — among the offered options, that is the only Rajput ruling house, and it is specifically Rajput ruling houses (not Sikhs, Marathas, or a religious community) that Akbar's watan jagir policy of confirming a chief's own homeland as his hereditary jagir was built around.

• Akbar's dealings with the Sikh Panth took the form of religious patronage — visiting and granting land to the Sikh Gurus — rather than the induction of a ruling chief's ancestral kingdom into Mughal service on the specific watan jagir arrangement of homeland-as-hereditary-jagir.

• Maratha political-military organisation under a unified leadership only developed from the mid-seventeenth century, some five to six decades after Akbar's reign (1556-1605) had ended, placing any Mughal-Maratha jagir dealings well outside Akbar's own timeframe.

• Watan jagir was tied to one ruling chief's own ancestral territory as an individual, family arrangement, so a broad demographic label like 'Indian Muslims' describes a different kind of category altogether from the specific ruling-chief mechanism this term refers to.

So, going by the option that fits the watan jagir mechanism and matches this PYQ's official key, the answer is Sisodiya Rajputs — while noting that Mewar's own settlement with the Mughals specifically dates to Jahangir's reign rather than Akbar's.