CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 1 of 120

Correct — B, Singareni Collieries Company Limited. Singareni carries the earliest date of any state-owned coal producer in India, and by a wide margin. Dr King of the Geological Survey of India found coal near Yellandu in 1871; the Hyderabad (Deccan) Company Limited, registered in England, took the mining rights in 1886, and working began in 1889. The present company was floated on 23 December 1920 under the Hyderabad Companies Act. The State of Hyderabad bought a majority of its shares in 1945, control passed to the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 1956, and the company has been jointly held by the state and the Union since March 1960. The split today is Government of Telangana 51, Government of India 49. Everything else on the list was created decades later.

• (a)Neyveli Lignite Corporation — Incorporated in 1956, thirty-six years after Singareni was floated. Its mineral is lignite — brown coal — from the Neyveli field of Tamil Nadu, not the bituminous coal of the Godavari valley.
• (c)Coal India Limited — The biggest, which is why it tempts, but not the oldest. CIL dates from 1975 and was assembled to hold the collieries the Union government had nationalised in 1971-73. Singareni was already more than half a century old by then and stayed outside that structure as a state-government company.
• (d)Mahanadi Coalfields Limited — Younger than its own parent. MCL was carved out of South Eastern Coalfields Limited in 1992, with headquarters at Sambalpur, to work the Odisha coalfields.

Coal ownership in India runs on three tracks. Coal India Limited and its eight subsidiaries, owned by the Union government, produce the great bulk of the country's coal. NLC India works lignite at Neyveli and in Rajasthan and Gujarat. And Singareni Collieries Company Limited, a Telangana government company held jointly with the Union, has been mining the Pranahita-Godavari belt since the nineteenth century — the one large coal producer in India that a state government controls.

The question rewards a date rather than a size. Read 'first and the oldest' strictly as year of birth and the four collapse into an order: 1920 for Singareni, 1956 for NLC, 1975 for Coal India, 1992 for Mahanadi Coalfields. The word 'Government-owned' is the second cue. Singareni was a privately floated Hyderabad company until the Nizam's state bought the majority in 1945, so its public ownership also predates by a quarter of a century the nationalisation that produced Coal India. A geography hook worth carrying: the Godavari valley field is the one major Indian coalfield outside the Damodar-Son-Mahanadi group, which is why it ended up with its own company instead of a CIL subsidiary.

• Dr King of the Geological Survey of India found coal near Yellandu in 1871; the Hyderabad (Deccan) Company Limited acquired the mining rights in 1886 and working started in 1889.
• The Singareni Collieries Company Limited was incorporated on 23 December 1920 under the Hyderabad Companies Act as a public limited company.
• The State of Hyderabad purchased the majority shareholding in 1945, and the controlling interest devolved on the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 1956.
• SCCL today is owned by the Government of Telangana and the Government of India on a 51:49 equity basis and runs 17 opencast and 22 underground mines across six Telangana districts.
• Coal India Limited was founded in 1975, NLC India was incorporated in 1956, and Mahanadi Coalfields was carved out of South Eastern Coalfields in 1992.

• Reading 'first and oldest' as 'largest' and picking Coal India.
• Counting Neyveli as a coal company without noticing that its mineral is lignite.
• Assuming every government coal company must be a Coal India subsidiary — Singareni is not one.

Either as a one-liner on the first or oldest coal company, or as a match of coalfield to river valley and to the company that works it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Singareni coal belt lies along the valley of which one of the following rivers?

  • (a)Damodar
  • (b)Son
  • (c)Godavari
  • (d)Mahanadi

  Answer(c) Godavari — Singareni's reserves stretch for about 350 km along the Pranahita-Godavari valley in Telangana.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Neyveli in Tamil Nadu is associated with the mining of which one of the following?

  • (a)Bituminous coal
  • (b)Anthracite
  • (c)Lignite
  • (d)Peat

  Answer(c) Lignite — the Neyveli field is a Tertiary lignite deposit, worked by NLC India since 1956.