Assertion (A) : Emperor Akbar marched towards Afghanistan in 1581 with a huge army. Reason (R) : He was on his way to reclaim his ancestral country of Ferghana in Central Asia.

Assertion (A) is correct: Akbar did move against the north‑west frontier in the 1580s and led a substantial military effort to secure Mughal interests in and around Afghanistan (Kabul/Kandahar) and to stabilize the volatile frontier [1]. Reason (R) is incorrect: the motive was strategic control of the north‑west frontier, consolidation of Kandahar/Kabul and suppression of rival Afghan powers, not an attempt to “reclaim” Ferghana — that was Babur’s earlier Timurid ambition in Central Asia, not Akbar’s policy focus [2]. Thus A is true but R is not the correct explanation of A.

Sources

1. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar
2. [2] https://en.unesco.org/silkroad/sites/default/files/knowledge-bank-article/vol_V%20silk%20road_the%20mughal%20empire%20and%20its%20sucessors.pdf