MPSC 2024 Prelims Paper-I · Question 30 of 100

Correct — option (1), (a), (b) and (c): Bandar, Ghoggus and Telwasa. The item that decides the question is the one left out, (d) Wani. Wani is a well-known coal town — it is called the black diamond town for exactly that reason, and Western Coalfields Limited even names two of its mining areas after it — but Wani taluka lies in Yavatmal district, not in Chandrapur. Since the stem asks specifically about places in Chandrapur district, every option containing Wani is out, which removes option (4) at a stroke. That leaves three candidates, and the other two are ruled out by the same kind of check. Option (2) claims that Bandar alone carries coal, and option (3) that Ghoggus alone does; both collapse as soon as more than one of the three named places is shown to be a coal locality of the district. Ghoggus — Ghugus, a mining village in Chandrapur tehsil about twenty kilometres from Chandrapur town — has long-worked collieries yielding a good grade of non-coking coal. Telwasa is the site of an opencast mine operated by Western Coalfields Limited in Bhadravati tehsil of the same district. With both of those established, neither single-place option can stand, and option (1) is the only choice left; the paper's option list itself therefore requires Bandar to be read as the third Chandrapur coal locality. All three sit within the Wardha Valley coalfield, which lies mainly in Chandrapur district and is the source of most of Maharashtra's coal. The wider point the question is testing is that Maharashtra's coal is not spread across the state at all: it is confined to the Wardha valley belt of eastern Vidarbha, and knowing which district a named colliery falls in is exactly the kind of local geography MPSC expects a Maharashtra candidate to hold.

• (2)only (a) — This restricts the district's coal to Bandar alone, which cannot be right because Ghugus and Telwasa are both established coal-mining localities within Chandrapur district — Ghugus a long-worked colliery village in Chandrapur tehsil, Telwasa an opencast working of Western Coalfields Limited in Bhadravati tehsil. An 'only one' option on a question of this shape is almost always testing whether the candidate can name a second instance, and here two further instances are available. The option is attractive only to someone who recognises one name on the list and none of the others.
• (3)only (b) — This restricts the answer to Ghoggus alone. Ghugus is genuinely a coal locality of Chandrapur district, so the option starts from a true fact, which makes it more dangerous than option (2) — a candidate who has heard of Ghugus and of nothing else on the list will feel confirmed by it. But Telwasa is equally a coal working in the same district, in Bhadravati tehsil, so the district's coal is not confined to Ghugus and the exclusive claim fails. Recognising one correct name is not the same as verifying that the others are wrong.
• (4)(b), (c) and (d) — This is the trap option, because it pairs two genuine Chandrapur localities, Ghoggus and Telwasa, with Wani — and Wani is the name a candidate is most likely to associate with coal, since it is a major mining town and lends its name to two of Western Coalfields Limited's administrative areas. The catch is district: Wani taluka belongs to Yavatmal district, not Chandrapur. The stem is specific about the district, so a coal town in the neighbouring district is a wrong answer no matter how important it is, and this option is set precisely to punish a candidate who checks the commodity but not the administrative boundary.

Maharashtra's coal is confined to the eastern edge of the state, in the Vidarbha districts, and it belongs to the Gondwana coal measures that supply almost all of India's mineable coal. The principal field is the Wardha Valley coalfield, which lies mainly in Chandrapur district and extends into the neighbouring districts of Yavatmal and Wardha, with a separate smaller field, the Kamptee coalfield, in Nagpur district. Chandrapur is accordingly the state's coal district in the way that Dhanbad is Jharkhand's: mining is worked there by Western Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of Coal India, through a set of administrative areas each named after a locality, and the coal supports a heavy concentration of thermal power generation and cement manufacture in and around the district. Gondwana coal of this kind is mostly non-coking and of moderate grade, which is why it is used principally for power generation rather than for metallurgy, and the location of the state's large coal-fired power stations in eastern Vidarbha follows directly from the location of the field — it is cheaper to move electricity than to move low-grade coal.

Questions on Maharashtra's mineral geography almost always turn on district placement rather than on geology, because that is what distinguishes a candidate who has studied the state from one who has read a general economic geography. The trap in this item is a good example: the discriminating fact is not what coal is or how it formed, but that Wani belongs to Yavatmal and not to Chandrapur, and that two administrative mining areas of Western Coalfields Limited carry the name Wani even so. The habit worth building for MPSC is to attach a district to every place name learned in the state's mineral, industrial and irrigation geography, and to be sceptical when a familiar name appears in a question about a neighbouring district. A second habit this question rewards is structural: when three of the four options are subsets of one another, work out which single item splits them and settle that item first.

• Maharashtra's coal is confined to eastern Vidarbha, chiefly the Wardha Valley coalfield lying mainly in Chandrapur district, with a smaller field in Nagpur district.
• Ghugus, printed in this paper as Ghoggus, is a coal-mining village in Chandrapur tehsil about twenty kilometres from Chandrapur town, with collieries yielding non-coking coal.
• Telwasa is the site of an opencast coal mine operated by Western Coalfields Limited in Bhadravati tehsil of Chandrapur district.
• Wani is a coal town in Yavatmal district, not Chandrapur, although Western Coalfields Limited names mining areas after it — the district placement is what this question tests.
• India's mineable coal is overwhelmingly Gondwana coal, mostly non-coking and used for thermal power generation, which is why coal-fired power stations cluster close to the coalfields.

• Placing Wani in Chandrapur because Western Coalfields Limited runs mining areas named after it; the taluka itself lies in Yavatmal district
• Accepting an 'only one place' option after recognising a single familiar name, without checking whether the other names are also coal localities
• Answering a district-specific question with a fact that is true of the state or the coalfield as a whole rather than of the named district
• Being thrown by the paper's spellings — Ghoggus for Ghugus — and dismissing a locality because the printed form is unfamiliar

MPSC tests Maharashtra's economic geography almost entirely through place-to-district association: which mineral is found in which district, which project is on which river, which industry is concentrated in which town. The wrong options are drawn from adjacent districts and from places that are genuinely associated with the same commodity, so the question cannot be answered from a general sense of where things are. Expect the statement-subset format used here, where the options overlap and one item decides everything, and expect the decisive item to be a place whose district is easy to misremember.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Wani, often described as a black diamond town for its coal, lies in which district of Maharashtra ?

  • (a)Chandrapur
  • (b)Yavatmal
  • (c)Nagpur
  • (d)Wardha

  Answer(b) Yavatmal — Wani taluka belongs to Yavatmal district, although the coal it produces is part of the same Wardha Valley coalfield that runs through Chandrapur, and Western Coalfields Limited names administrative mining areas after the town. The district placement, not the coalfield, is what such questions turn on.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Most of Maharashtra's coal reserves are located in which of the following ?

  • (a)The Konkan coastal strip
  • (b)The Wardha valley belt of eastern Vidarbha
  • (c)The Sahyadri ranges of western Maharashtra
  • (d)The Tapi valley of Khandesh

  Answer(b) The Wardha valley belt of eastern Vidarbha — the Wardha Valley coalfield lies mainly in Chandrapur district and extends into Yavatmal and Wardha, with a smaller field in Nagpur district. The Konkan, the Sahyadri and the Tapi valley have no comparable coal measures, which is why Maharashtra's coal-fired power capacity is concentrated in the east of the state.