BPSC 71st CCE Prelims Q119: Gold is found in which district of

Q: What is the answer to BPSC 71st CCE Prelims Q119?

B. Correct — B, Jamui District. Every tonne of gold-bearing rock that India's National Mineral Inventory attributes to Bihar lies in the Sono area of Jamui district, in the hilly country along the Bihar–Jharkhand border. The inventory figures, compiled under the UNFC system as on 1 April 2015, are worth learning exactly, because they are the most misquoted numbers in Bihar's geography. India's primary gold resources stand at 501.83 million tonnes of ORE containing 654.74 tonnes of gold METAL. Bihar accounts for 222.885 million tonnes of that ore — about 44% of the national figure, which is why the state is described as sitting on a large share of India's gold. But the contained metal in Bihar's share is only 37.6 tonnes, roughly 5.7% of India's gold. The arithmetic explains the gap: Bihar's ore averages about 0.17 grams of gold per tonne against about 1.30 g/t for the Indian inventory as a whole and around 4.8 g/t in the working reserve at Hutti in Karnataka. A very large volume of very poor rock is not a gold mine. Nor is any of it proved: Bihar's holding is split between UNFC code 333 (Inferred), 128.885 million tonnes of ore with 21.6 tonnes of metal, and code 334 (Reconnaissance), 94 million tonnes with 16 tonnes — the two lowest confidence classes, with no reserve at all. The Bihar government approved GSI-assisted exploration of the Jamui block in May 2022, but as of the September-2025 exam the state had no producing gold mine; India's primary gold mining remains essentially confined to Karnataka.

BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 119 of 150

Verified against the official question booklet. Answer as per the official BPSC answer key.

Question order, option order and answers follow the official BPSC Booklet Series E (booklet GA-502), paper code 11/GA/CC/PT-2025.

Gold is found in which district of Bihar?

(a)Gaya District
(b)Jamui District
(c)Nalanda District
(d)Bhagalpur District

Answer

Why

Correct — B, Jamui District. Every tonne of gold-bearing rock that India's National Mineral Inventory attributes to Bihar lies in the Sono area of Jamui district, in the hilly country along the Bihar–Jharkhand border. The inventory figures, compiled under the UNFC system as on 1 April 2015, are worth learning exactly, because they are the most misquoted numbers in Bihar's geography. India's primary gold resources stand at 501.83 million tonnes of ORE containing 654.74 tonnes of gold METAL. Bihar accounts for 222.885 million tonnes of that ore — about 44% of the national figure, which is why the state is described as sitting on a large share of India's gold. But the contained metal in Bihar's share is only 37.6 tonnes, roughly 5.7% of India's gold. The arithmetic explains the gap: Bihar's ore averages about 0.17 grams of gold per tonne against about 1.30 g/t for the Indian inventory as a whole and around 4.8 g/t in the working reserve at Hutti in Karnataka. A very large volume of very poor rock is not a gold mine. Nor is any of it proved: Bihar's holding is split between UNFC code 333 (Inferred), 128.885 million tonnes of ore with 21.6 tonnes of metal, and code 334 (Reconnaissance), 94 million tonnes with 16 tonnes — the two lowest confidence classes, with no reserve at all. The Bihar government approved GSI-assisted exploration of the Jamui block in May 2022, but as of the September-2025 exam the state had no producing gold mine; India's primary gold mining remains essentially confined to Karnataka.

Why the others are wrong

(a)Gaya District — Gaya is the best-known name on the list and therefore the most tempting, but its fame is Bodh Gaya, the Vishnupad temple and the Phalgu, not metals. Its mineral associations are mica on the old Bihar mica belt and building stone. No gold-ore resource is recorded for Gaya in the National Mineral Inventory, which places the whole of Bihar's gold in Jamui.
(c)Nalanda District — Nalanda is a Gangetic-plain district, alluvium over most of its area apart from the low Rajgir hills, and it is examined for the mahavihara, Rajgir and its hot springs rather than for minerals. Deep young alluvium is the wrong setting entirely for a primary gold deposit, which needs Precambrian crystalline rock at or near the surface.
(d)Bhagalpur District — Bhagalpur's reputation is tussar and Bhagalpuri silk, the Vikramshila mahavihara ruins and the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary on the Ganga. It is a plains district on the river. The inventory records no gold-ore resource there; all of Bihar's gold-bearing rock is attributed to the Sono area of Jamui.

Concept

Gold questions punish anyone who does not separate three quantities. ORE is the tonnage of rock that carries gold. GRADE is how much metal a tonne of that rock holds, expressed in grams per tonne. CONTAINED METAL is ore multiplied by grade, and it is the only figure that means anything commercially. India's whole inventory of 501.83 million tonnes of gold ore yields just 654.74 tonnes of metal, an average of about 1.3 g/t; a working mine such as Hutti in Raichur district carries about 31.02 million tonnes of ore holding 150.4 tonnes of gold, close to 4.8 g/t. Bihar's Sono deposit, at roughly 0.17 g/t, is an order of magnitude poorer than the national average, which is why 44% of India's gold ORE translates into under 6% of India's gold METAL. On top of grade sits confidence. The United Nations Framework Classification, which the National Mineral Inventory uses, ranks a deposit by how well it has been proved — 331 measured, 332 indicated, 333 inferred, 334 reconnaissance — and only the economically demonstrated part is called a Reserve. Bihar's gold is entirely 333 and 334, meaning it has been inferred from scattered drilling and regional survey rather than blocked out. Karnataka, by contrast, has been mining continuously: Kolar Gold Fields under Bharat Gold Mines closed in 2001, but Hutti Gold Mines Limited still works the Hutti–Muski greenstone belt from underground and open-cast mines in Raichur district and a unit at Chitradurga.

Two independent routes reach Jamui, and the strongest answer uses both. The first is elimination by setting. A primary gold deposit needs old crystalline rock near the surface. Nalanda and Bhagalpur are Gangetic-plain districts on deep young alluvium, and Gaya sits at the plain's southern edge; only Jamui lies in the hilly Bihar–Jharkhand border country on the northern fringe of the Chota Nagpur plateau, where Precambrian rocks are exposed, and its own district profile lists untapped mica, coal, gold and iron ore. The second route is memory of the news, because this fact reached the front pages in May 2022 when Bihar announced exploration of the Jamui block. That is also where the danger lies. The same coverage reported the deposit as '222 million tonnes of gold', and the Geological Survey of India had to issue a public denial that it had ever estimated gold reserves of 222.88 million tonnes at Jamui. The figure is the ore tonnage; the gold in it is 37.6 tonnes. Sanity-check the claim against the world's entire annual gold output, of the order of 3,000 tonnes, and the impossibility is obvious. The single discriminating fact for the exam is narrow and safe: the National Mineral Inventory places all of Bihar's gold-ore resource in the Sono area of Jamui district.

Key facts

National Mineral Inventory as on 1 April 2015: India's primary gold resources are 501.83 million tonnes of ore containing 654.74 tonnes of gold metal; Bihar holds 222.885 million tonnes of ore — about 44% of the national ore — but only 37.6 tonnes of contained metal, about 5.7% of India's gold, all of it in the Sono area of Jamui district.
Bihar's entire gold resource sits in the two lowest UNFC confidence classes — 128.885 million tonnes of ore with 21.6 tonnes of metal under code 333 (Inferred) and 94 million tonnes with 16 tonnes under code 334 (Reconnaissance) — so the state has no proved gold reserve at all.
Grade is what separates the two figures: Bihar's ore averages about 0.17 grams of gold per tonne against roughly 1.30 g/t for India's inventory as a whole and about 4.8 g/t in the 31.02 million tonnes of ore and 150.4 tonnes of gold held by Hutti Gold Mines Limited in Karnataka.
Media reports in May 2022 described Jamui as holding '222 million tonnes of gold'; the Geological Survey of India publicly denied ever making such an estimate. The figure is ore, not metal, and world gold output is only of the order of 3,000 tonnes a year, so the claim was impossible on its face.
Jamui district was carved out of Munger district on 21 February 1991; it covers 3,122 sq km with a 2011 population of 1,760,405, Sono is one of its ten blocks, and the district also reports mica, coal and iron ore. India's mined gold comes from Karnataka — Hutti in Raichur district and the Chitradurga unit — after Kolar Gold Fields closed in 2001.

Bihar's gold — a great deal of rock, very little metal

Where Bihar's gold occurs→SONO area, JAMUI district — the only Bihar location in the National Mineral Inventory

Gold ORE resource, Bihar→222.885 million tonnes — about 44% of India's 501.83 million tonnes

Contained gold METAL, Bihar→37.6 tonnes — about 5.7% of India's 654.74 tonnes

Average grade of Bihar's ore→about 0.17 g per tonne, against about 1.30 g per tonne for India as a whole

Confidence class of the resource→UNFC 333 (Inferred) 128.885 Mt and UNFC 334 (Reconnaissance) 94 Mt — no proved reserve

Where India actually mines gold→Karnataka — Hutti (Raichur) and Chitradurga, about 4.8 g per tonne

The highlighted row answers the question. The rows below it are the reason the answer is so often misreported: 222.885 million tonnes is the weight of the ROCK, and the gold inside it weighs 37.6 tonnes.

Study next

India's gold geography — the Dharwar craton greenstone belts, Kolar Gold Fields and its closure in 2001, Hutti–Muski in Raichur, and Ramagiri in Andhra PradeshUNFC and the National Mineral Inventory — reserves against remaining resources, and the 331/332/333/334 confidence codes that decide whether a deposit is bankableBihar's mineral map after the 2000 bifurcation — gold ore in Jamui, pyrite at Amjhore in Rohtas, limestone and dolomite in Kaimur and Rohtas, bauxite in Munger, glass sand in BhagalpurGold in the Indian economy — import dependence, the current account deficit, sovereign gold bonds, gold monetisation and hallmarkingJamui beyond minerals — Jain tradition places Mahavira's attainment of Kevala Jnana at Jrimbhikagrama near Jamui, and the district lies on the Bihar–Jharkhand border in the Red Corridor

Common traps

Repeating the headline that Bihar has '222 million tonnes of gold' — that is the ore tonnage; the contained gold is 37.6 tonnes, and the Geological Survey of India has denied the larger claim outright
Concluding that a 44% share of India's gold ore makes Bihar a gold-producing state — the ore averages about 0.17 g per tonne, the resource is only inferred, and mining is confined to Karnataka
Choosing Gaya because it is the Bihar district a candidate can name; Gaya's mineral association is mica and building stone, and the inventory places all of Bihar's gold in Jamui

BPSC wants the district, flat and unadorned, and expects the candidate to have followed Bihar's own mineral news — the Jamui gold story of 2022 is precisely the kind of item it converts into a one-liner. UPSC does not ask which district holds a mineral; it asks you to judge a claim about occurrence and mining, as in its statement sets on whether particular states have gold mines, or its matching sets pairing a mineral with a typical area of occurrence such as gold with Hutti. The BPSC form rewards a district list; the UPSC form rewards knowing that occurrence, reserve and production are three different things.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2018_GS1_Q272018Open & attempt →

Consider the following statements: 1. In India, State Governments do not have the power to auction non-coal mines. 2. Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand do not have gold mines. 3. Rajasthan has iron ore mines. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2
(b) 2 only
(c) 1 and 3
(d) 3 only

Answer(d) 3 only

Statement 2 is the same knowledge the BPSC item tests, turned into a judgement call: which states actually have gold. It is wrong because Jharkhand does hold gold deposits, just as Bihar does in Jamui — and the question also carries the auction rule under the amended MMDR Act, the legal machinery under which the Jamui block was taken up for exploration.

UPSC_1997_GS1_Q151997Open & attempt →

Match List I with List II and select the correct answer by using the codes given below the lists: List I (Minerals) I. Coal II. Gold III. Mica IV. Manganese List II (Typical areas of Occurrence) A) Bhandara B) Karanpura C) Hutti D) Nellore Codes:

(a) I-A, II-C, III-B, IV-D
(b) I-B, II-C, III-D, IV-A
(c) I-C, II-D, III-B, IV-A
(d) I-B, II-A, III-D, IV-C

Answer(b) I-B, II-C, III-D, IV-A

Identical in substance — pair a mineral with the place it typically occurs. Item II sends gold to Hutti in Raichur district, the mine that still supplies most of India's gold and the natural comparison for Jamui: Hutti's ore runs about 4.8 grams per tonne while Bihar's runs about 0.17, which is why one is a mine and the other is a resource.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The gold-bearing resource recorded for Bihar in the National Mineral Inventory lies in which area of Jamui district?
- (a)Sono
- (b)Chakai
- (c)Jhajha
- (d)Sikandra
Answer(a) Sono — the inventory attributes the whole of Bihar's gold-ore resource, 222.885 million tonnes of ore containing 37.6 tonnes of metal, to the Sono area. Chakai, Jhajha and Sikandra are other blocks of Jamui district but carry no recorded gold resource.
practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following States accounts for almost all of India's gold produced by mining?
- (a)Bihar
- (b)Karnataka
- (c)Jharkhand
- (d)Rajasthan
Answer(b) Karnataka — Hutti Gold Mines Limited works the Hutti–Muski belt in Raichur district along with a unit at Chitradurga; Kolar Gold Fields closed in 2001. Bihar holds a large gold-ore resource in Jamui but mines none of it.