BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 38 of 150

Correct — C, the maximum tree cover has been found in Maharashtra followed by Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. This option is lifted almost word for word from ISFR 2023, which puts Maharashtra's tree cover at 14,524.88 sq km, Rajasthan's at 10,841.12 sq km and Uttar Pradesh's at 8,950.92 sq km — that exact order. It looks wrong to a candidate who has memorised the forest-cover league table, because none of these three is a forest-rich state, and that is precisely the point being tested. 'Tree cover' in the Forest Survey of India's vocabulary is not forest at all: it is the trees standing outside the recorded forest area in patches smaller than one hectare — orchards, farm bunds, avenue plantations, homestead and village groves. States with vast irrigated farmland and horticulture therefore top it, while the forested states of central and north-eastern India do not, because their trees are already counted as forest cover. Maharashtra's fruit orchards, Rajasthan's arid-zone agroforestry and Uttar Pradesh's mango and poplar plantations are exactly the landscapes that generate tree cover. The other two statements fail on figures FSI itself publishes. India's forest cover in ISFR 2023 is 7,15,343 sq km, or 21.76 per cent of the geographical area, and tree cover a further 1,12,014 sq km, or 3.41 per cent; the two together are 8,27,357 sq km — 25.17 per cent, not 15 per cent. And the three largest recorded forest areas belong to Madhya Pradesh at 94,689 sq km, Maharashtra at 61,952 sq km and Odisha at 61,204 sq km, followed by Chhattisgarh at 59,816 and Arunachal Pradesh at 51,540; Jharkhand has 25,118 sq km, Manipur 17,418 and Andaman & Nicobar just 7,171. Only one statement survives, so (d) cannot stand either. ISFR 2023 is the 18th report in a biennial series FSI has run since 1987, released on 21 December 2024 by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav at the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, and it remains FSI's current edition.

• (a)The total forest and tree cover of the country is 15% of the geographical area of the country. — ISFR 2023 reports forest cover at 21.76 per cent and tree cover at a further 3.41 per cent of the geographical area — 25.17 per cent together, or 8,27,357 sq km. The figure 15 per cent corresponds to nothing FSI publishes: not forest cover, not tree cover, and not the National Forest Policy 1988 target of 33 per cent. It is a plausible-sounding number with no source behind it, which is what makes it a good distractor.
• (b)Top three states having largest recorded forest area (RFA) are Jharkhand, Andaman & Nicobar and Manipur. — This confuses a high percentage with a large area. Andaman & Nicobar is 81.62 per cent forest-covered and Manipur and Jharkhand are heavily wooded, so all three feel forest-rich — but they are small. Recorded forest area in absolute square kilometres is dominated by big states: Madhya Pradesh 94,689, Maharashtra 61,952, Odisha 61,204. Andaman & Nicobar has only 7,171 sq km, and it is a Union Territory, not a State as the option claims.
• (d)More than one of the above — This needs at least two of the three statements to be true, and only one is. Statement (a) misstates 25.17 per cent as 15 per cent and statement (b) names three of the smallest recorded forest areas as the largest, so both fail on FSI's own published tables. The composite option is the paper's standard fourth choice and is right only where the stem genuinely admits several — here it does not.

The Forest Survey of India measures three different things, and almost every mistake on this topic comes from treating them as one. Recorded forest area is a legal category: land entered as forest in government records, classified as reserved, protected or unclassed, regardless of whether a single tree stands on it. Forest cover is a satellite measurement: every patch of one hectare or more with a tree canopy density of ten per cent or above, counted irrespective of ownership or legal status — so a mango orchard or a bamboo grove on private land is forest cover, while a barren but legally notified hillside is recorded forest area and not forest cover. Tree cover is the residual: tree patches smaller than one hectare and isolated trees outside the recorded forest area, the 'trees outside forests' that a ten-metre-resolution satellite pass cannot resolve as forest. FSI has published this assessment biennially since 1987; ISFR 2023, the 18th edition, was released on 21 December 2024. Because the three measures answer different questions, their state rankings differ sharply — Madhya Pradesh leads on recorded forest area and on forest cover, Lakshadweep and Mizoram lead on forest cover as a share of their area, and Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh lead on tree cover.

The single fact that discriminates here is that tree cover is measured outside forests, not inside them. Once you hold that, option (c) stops looking absurd: Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh top the tree-cover table not despite being agricultural states but because they are agricultural states, their orchards, farm-bund plantings and roadside avenues being exactly what the tree-cover class counts. A candidate who reads 'maximum tree cover' as 'most forested' will reject the true statement and hunt for a distractor instead. The other two options can be knocked out on arithmetic alone. Fifteen per cent is far too low to be a combined forest-and-tree figure when forest cover by itself has been above twenty per cent in every report since the early 2000s. And option (b) is a percentage-versus-area trap of the kind BPSC and UPSC both love: Andaman & Nicobar and Manipur have very high forest percentages but small territories, so they cannot lead on absolute recorded forest area, which belongs to the large central-Indian states. Note too that Andaman & Nicobar is a Union Territory, not a State — the option's own wording is defective. With (a) and (b) both false, (d) falls automatically, which is a useful structural check: on a 'more than one of the above' paper, disproving two statements settles two options at once.

• ISFR 2023 puts tree cover at its maximum in Maharashtra (14,524.88 sq km), followed by Rajasthan (10,841.12 sq km) and Uttar Pradesh (8,950.92 sq km) — the exact sequence printed in option (c).
• India's forest cover in ISFR 2023 is 7,15,343 sq km or 21.76 per cent of the geographical area, and tree cover a further 1,12,014 sq km or 3.41 per cent; total forest and tree cover is 8,27,357 sq km, 25.17 per cent — an increase of 1,445 sq km over ISFR 2021, of which 1,289 sq km was tree cover and only 156 sq km forest cover.
• Largest recorded forest area: Madhya Pradesh 94,689 sq km, Maharashtra 61,952, Odisha 61,204, Chhattisgarh 59,816, Arunachal Pradesh 51,540. Jharkhand has 25,118 sq km, Manipur 17,418 and Andaman & Nicobar 7,171 — none of them in the top three.
• Rankings depend on which measure you use: largest forest cover by area is Madhya Pradesh 77,073 sq km, Arunachal Pradesh 65,882, Chhattisgarh 55,812; highest forest cover as a share of geographical area is Lakshadweep 91.33 per cent, Mizoram 85.34 per cent, Andaman & Nicobar 81.62 per cent; highest tree cover as a share of area is Chandigarh 18.58 per cent, Delhi 11.87 per cent, Kerala 7.48 per cent.
• ISFR 2023 is the 18th report in a series FSI has published biennially since 1987; it was released on 21 December 2024 at the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. It also records mangrove cover of 4,992 sq km and a forest carbon stock of 7,285.5 million tonnes, equal to 30.43 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent — 2.29 billion tonnes above the 2005 level, against India's Nationally Determined Contribution target of an additional 2.5 to 3.0 billion tonnes. Bihar's recorded forest area is 7,442 sq km, only 7.90 per cent of the State (693 sq km reserved, 6,183 protected, 566 unclassed), among India's lowest shares.

• Reading 'tree cover' as 'forest cover' — tree cover counts patches under one hectare outside the recorded forest area, which is why agricultural Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh lead it and the forested states do not
• Confusing a high forest percentage with a large forest area — Andaman & Nicobar is 81.62 per cent forested but only 7,171 sq km of recorded forest area, against Madhya Pradesh's 94,689 sq km
• Quoting 33 per cent as an achievement rather than a target — it is the National Forest Policy 1988 goal; the achieved figure in ISFR 2023 is 25.17 per cent forest and tree cover together

BPSC lifts a sentence straight out of the current report and asks you to certify it — the wording of option (c) is very nearly ISFR 2023's own, so a candidate who has read the report's summary chapter recognises it instantly and one who has read a coaching note does not. UPSC rarely quotes a report line. It asks you to rank states by percentage of forest cover in ascending order (2019), or pairs a forest-cover statistic with a policy target and asks which statement holds (2005). BPSC rewards the number; UPSC rewards knowing which number answers which question.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  As per the Forest Survey of India's definition, an area is counted as 'forest cover' if it is at least one hectare in extent with a tree canopy density of at least

  • (a)10 per cent
  • (b)25 per cent
  • (c)40 per cent
  • (d)70 per cent

  Answer(a) 10 per cent — FSI counts all land of one hectare or more with canopy density of 10 per cent and above as forest cover, irrespective of ownership or legal status. 40 per cent and 70 per cent are the thresholds for moderately dense and very dense forest respectively.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to the India State of Forest Report 2023, which State has the largest forest cover in terms of area ?

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

  Answer(c) Madhya Pradesh — 77,073 sq km of forest cover, ahead of Arunachal Pradesh at 65,882 sq km and Chhattisgarh at 55,812 sq km. Madhya Pradesh also leads on recorded forest area with 94,689 sq km.