BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 110 of 143

Correct — D, All the above. The Ministry of Coal publishes a state-wise inventory of India's coal resources, and the top of that table settles the question outright. As on 1 April 2023 the figures in billion tonnes were Odisha 100.99, Jharkhand 93.25 and Chhattisgarh 85.26 — the first, second and third ranked states — against a national total of 378.21 billion tonnes. Those three alone hold 279.50 billion tonnes, which is close to 74 per cent of all the coal resources in the country. No fourth state comes near: West Bengal is next at 34.39 billion tonnes, then Madhya Pradesh at 33.56 and Telangana at 23.29. Since each of the three named options is independently and enormously true, the only option that does not understate the position is 'All the above'. This is the reasoning any composite option demands and the reason it is correct here rather than a hedge: you can name each of the three and show it qualifies on its own. Two refinements make the fact worth more than a rank order. First, 'reserve' in the Ministry's table means geological resource, estimated to a depth of 1,200 metres and split under the United Nations Framework Classification into Measured (331), Indicated (332) and Inferred (333) categories — not coal that is proved extractable at today's prices. Second, the leadership depends on which column you read: Odisha leads on total resource, but Jharkhand leads on the Measured column, 60.29 billion tonnes against Odisha's 55.01, which is why older textbooks that call Jharkhand India's first coal state are not simply wrong. On the wider frame, the Ministry records the National Coal Inventory of 2025, published by the Geological Survey of India, as putting India's total coal resource at 400.715 billion tonnes as of 1 April 2025, with lignite separately at 47.37 billion tonnes, spread across 64 explored coalfields — 45 Gondwana and 19 Tertiary.

• (a)Jharkhand — True in itself, and therefore wrong as an answer, because the stem asks which states have major reserves and Jharkhand is only one of the three offered that qualify. Its 93.25 billion tonnes place it second on total resource and first on measured resource; the Damodar valley fields — Jharia, Bokaro, Giridih, Karanpura — are the country's principal source of coking coal.
• (b)Chhattisgarh — Also true and also incomplete. Chhattisgarh holds 85.26 billion tonnes, third in India, with the Korba, Mand-Raigarh and Hasdeo-Arand fields; over a fifth of India's coal production comes from the state. Choosing it alone throws away the two larger holders on the same list.
• (c)Odisha — The subtlest of the three to reject, because Odisha is in fact the largest holder of all at 100.99 billion tonnes, led by the Talcher and Ib valley fields. A candidate who knows this may pick it precisely because it is the biggest — but the stem does not ask for the biggest, it asks which states have major reserves, and all three do.

Almost all of India's coal is Gondwana coal, laid down in rift basins along the Damodar, Mahanadi, Son, Godavari and Wardha valleys some 250 million years ago, and that geology is why the resource is concentrated in a diagonal belt across the eastern peninsula rather than spread evenly. The Ministry of Coal's inventory counts 64 explored coalfields, 45 of them Gondwana and 19 Tertiary; the Tertiary fields of the North-East are small and high in sulphur. India's coal is also mostly non-coking and of high ash content, which is why a country holding the world's fifth-largest coal resources still imports coking coal for steelmaking. The vocabulary matters in exams. 'Resource' is the total geological estimate; within it, Measured (331) resources are explored on a close grid, Indicated (332) on a wider one, and Inferred (333) are the least certain. Newspapers and textbooks often call the whole figure 'reserves', which overstates what can actually be mined. Lignite, a lower-rank brown coal, is counted separately — 47.37 billion tonnes — and is concentrated in Tamil Nadu at Neyveli rather than in the three states named here.

The instinct on a question like this is to look for the single biggest, and that instinct is exactly what the option set punishes. The stem's phrase is 'major reserves', which is a threshold and not a ranking, so the correct method is to test each named state against the threshold rather than against each other. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha each hold more than 85 billion tonnes; the fourth-placed state holds 34. All three clear any reasonable threshold by a wide margin, so the composite option is not a hedge but the only complete answer. Note how different this is from the paper's other composite questions. BPSC's usual fourth option, 'More than one of the above', is safe to pick only when you can name two options that are true simultaneously; here 'All the above' requires all three, and all three can be named with figures. The general rule to carry forward is that a composite option is correct when the stem states a property that several items can share — a threshold, a category, a membership — and wrong when the stem points to a unique item, such as a single confluence, a single capital or a single date.

• Ministry of Coal state-wise inventory, as on 1 April 2023 (billion tonnes): Odisha 100.99, Jharkhand 93.25, Chhattisgarh 85.26, West Bengal 34.39, Madhya Pradesh 33.56, Telangana 23.29, against a national total of 378.21
• Those three states together hold 279.50 billion tonnes — about 74 per cent of India's coal resources
• Rank depends on the category: Jharkhand leads on Measured (331) resource with 60.29 billion tonnes, ahead of Odisha's 55.01, while Odisha leads on total resource
• The Ministry cites the National Coal Inventory of 2025 by the Geological Survey of India: India's total coal resource is 400.715 billion tonnes as of 1 April 2025, and lignite 47.37 billion tonnes
• Resources are estimated to a depth of 1,200 m across 64 explored coalfields — 45 Gondwana and 19 Tertiary — plus 15 lignite fields
• Bihar itself holds 9.35 billion tonnes in the same table, eighth in India, most of it in the Indicated category at 6.97 billion tonnes

• Reading 'major reserves' as 'the most reserves' and picking a single state when the stem sets a threshold, not a rank
• Assuming Jharkhand is first on every measure — it leads on measured resource, while Odisha leads on total resource
• Treating the inventory figure as mineable reserves; it is a geological resource estimate to 1,200 m, including Indicated and Inferred categories

BPSC asks mineral geography as a short recognition question and frequently offers a composite fourth option, so the discipline is to check every named item independently rather than choose the most familiar one. UPSC works the same syllabus through location matching and through consequences — which steel plant lacks a local coalfield, which mineral is mined where, which type of coal has the highest carbon — so the map has to be linked to industry rather than memorised as a ranking.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to the Ministry of Coal's state-wise inventory, which State holds the largest total coal resources in India ?

  • (a)Jharkhand
  • (b)Odisha
  • (c)Chhattisgarh
  • (d)West Bengal

  Answer(b) Odisha — 100.99 billion tonnes as on 1 April 2023, ahead of Jharkhand's 93.25 and Chhattisgarh's 85.26; Jharkhand leads only on the measured category.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Talcher and Ib valley coalfields are located in which State ?

  • (a)Chhattisgarh
  • (b)Jharkhand
  • (c)Odisha
  • (d)Madhya Pradesh

  Answer(c) Odisha — both lie in the Mahanadi basin; Korba and Mand-Raigarh are in Chhattisgarh and Jharia and Bokaro in Jharkhand.