Which among the following States is not a part of the Purvodaya development initiative of the Government of India?

Correct — B, Chhattisgarh. Purvodaya was announced in the Union Budget of July 2024 as a plan "for the all-round development of the eastern region of the country covering Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh", to work through human resource development, infrastructure and the generation of economic opportunities. Chhattisgarh is not on that list of five states. It is easy to assume otherwise because Chhattisgarh is mineral-rich, adjoins Jharkhand and Odisha and shares their development profile, but geographically it is central India, and the plan was drawn for the eastern seaboard and the Gangetic east.

• (a)Bihar — Bihar is squarely inside Purvodaya, and the same Budget attached specific Bihar projects to it, including a national institute of food technology and entrepreneurship.
• (c)Jharkhand — Jharkhand is one of the five states named in the Budget announcement of the plan.
• (d)West Bengal — West Bengal is named in the plan alongside Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

Purvodaya is a regional development plan for eastern India announced in the Union Budget 2024-25. It groups five states — Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh — under one framework covering human resource development, infrastructure and economic opportunity, with the stated ambition of making the eastern region an engine of growth for a developed India. It runs alongside other eastern initiatives such as the Amritsar–Kolkata Industrial Corridor.

Regional groupings are tested by asking you to spot the state that does not belong, and the safe method is to recall the official list rather than reason from geography. Reasoning from geography fails here precisely because Chhattisgarh looks eastern in every economic sense: coal, steel, forests, a shared border with two member states. What the plan actually follows is the older idea of the eastern region as Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Note also that a state may belong to one regional scheme and not another; membership of an aspirational-districts list or a mining grouping tells you nothing about Purvodaya.

• Purvodaya was announced in the Union Budget 2024-25 for the all-round development of eastern India.
• The five states covered are Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
• Its three stated pillars are human resource development, infrastructure and economic opportunity.
• Chhattisgarh, though mineral-rich and adjoining the region, is not included.
• The Budget 2025-26 continued the commitment with a National Institute of Food Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management in Bihar.

• Adding Chhattisgarh to an 'eastern' list because it is mineral-rich and adjacent.
• Dropping Andhra Pradesh from the list because it is usually classified as southern.
• Confusing Purvodaya with the older Purvanchal or the north-eastern development schemes.

Asked as an odd-one-out item on a named regional plan — the examiner counts on geography-based guessing rather than recall of the official list.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Purvodaya, announced in the Union Budget 2024-25, covers how many states?

  • (a)Three
  • (b)Four
  • (c)Five
  • (d)Seven

  Answer(c) Five — Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of these southern states is included in the Purvodaya plan?

  • (a)Telangana
  • (b)Andhra Pradesh
  • (c)Tamil Nadu
  • (d)Karnataka

  Answer(b) Andhra Pradesh — the only southern state named in the plan.