MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 17 of 100

Correct — option (3), all three statements stand. Statement (c) is the firmest of them: the Maharashtra State Mining Corporation was incorporated in 1973 under the Companies Act of 1956, wholly owned by the state government and headquartered at Nagpur, and its working mines produce industrial minerals — limestone, dolomite, feldspar, fluorite, kyanite and iron ore. Its location in Nagpur is not incidental, which brings us to statement (b). Maharashtra's mineral geography is dictated by the Deccan trap. Basalt covers the greater part of the state and is poor in metallic minerals, so mineral wealth is confined to the margins where the trap gives way to older rocks: the eastern districts of the Nagpur and neighbouring divisions — Nagpur, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli — where crystalline and Gondwana formations carry coal, manganese, iron ore, limestone and dolomite, and the coastal belt of the Konkan, where Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri and Raigad yield iron ore, bauxite from the lateritic cover and silica sand. Those are the two mineral-bearing parts of the state, and the ranking in statement (b) — Konkan next after Nagpur — reflects that geology. Note that both names are revenue divisions of Maharashtra, which has six, so the statement is comparing administrative units and not vague geographic areas. Statement (a) records the opening of a named group of minerals to private production under the State Mineral Policy of 1999, which follows the liberalisation of the Indian mineral sector through the 1990s, when minerals that had been reserved for public-sector exploitation were progressively opened to private investment. All three statements standing, and no statement disprovable, the answer is the bundle that accepts every one of them, which is option (3).

• (1)Only statement (b) is correct. — Accepts the ranking of the mineral-bearing regions and rejects both the policy statement and the founding year of the state mining corporation. The founding year is the easiest of the three to verify and the hardest to argue with — the Maharashtra State Mining Corporation was incorporated in 1973 and has been a state undertaking ever since, with its office at Nagpur in the heart of the mineral belt. A candidate lands here by treating unfamiliarity as falsity: two of the three statements name things a general reader will not have met, and the temptation is to strike them out rather than admit the gap. On a bundle item, striking out a statement is a positive claim and needs a reason.
• (2)Statements (b) and (c) are correct. — The most attractive wrong answer, because it accepts the two statements a well-prepared candidate can check — the regional ranking and the 1973 incorporation — and discards only the policy statement, which is the least widely known of the three. But statement (a) is not defective. It records a set of minerals opened to private production under the State Mineral Policy of 1999, a state-level measure that sits inside the broader liberalisation of India's mineral sector during that decade, when minerals formerly reserved for public-sector working were opened to private investment. Rejecting a statement because it is obscure rather than because it is wrong is the specific error this option is fishing for.
• (4)Statements (a) and (b) are not correct. — Read the polarity of this option carefully, because it is the only one on the list phrased negatively — the other three assert that certain statements are correct, and this one asserts that two are not. A candidate skimming for the pattern 'statements (a) and (b)' can mark it while meaning the opposite. On the substance it fails twice over: the minerals named were opened to private production under the 1999 state policy, and the Konkan does rank next after the Nagpur division in mineral availability, a ranking that follows directly from the geology of the Deccan trap and the two non-trap margins where Maharashtra's minerals actually lie.

Maharashtra's mineral position is best understood as a consequence of one geological fact: the Deccan trap, the vast pile of basalt lava flows that covers most of the state, is barren of metallic minerals. Everything mineral-bearing therefore lies where the trap does not reach or where later weathering has produced something useful. In the east, in the Nagpur and Amravati divisions and the districts adjoining them, older crystalline rocks and Gondwana sediments carry the state's coal, manganese, iron ore, limestone and dolomite, and this belt is the reason Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Bhandara, Gondia and Nagpur dominate the state's mineral output. In the west, the Konkan's coastal strip carries iron ore in Sindhudurg, bauxite formed by lateritic weathering, and silica sand, which makes it the second mineral region. Between them, the Deccan plateau districts of the Pune and Nashik divisions contribute little beyond building stone and some bauxite on the high laterite caps. The institutional layer sits on top of this map: the Maharashtra State Mining Corporation, established in 1973 and based at Nagpur, works industrial minerals on the state's behalf, while the framework of policy — national and state — determines who else may work them.

This is a three-statement bundle in which every statement happens to be true, and that shape has a lesson of its own. A candidate under time pressure expects at least one planted falsehood and, finding none, begins to doubt the statement they know least about. That is the trap: unfamiliarity is not evidence of falsity, and on a bundle item rejecting a statement is a positive claim that needs a reason exactly as accepting one does. Notice also the option set. Three of the four choices are phrased positively — statement (b) alone, statements (b) and (c), all three — and the fourth flips to the negative, asserting that two statements are not correct. Mixed polarity within an option set is a standing feature of MPSC's bundle questions and it catches candidates who match on the statement labels rather than reading the whole sentence. Finally, the regions named are Maharashtra's revenue divisions, of which there are six — Konkan, Pune, Nashik, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Amravati and Nagpur — so questions of this kind are comparing defined administrative units and are answerable precisely rather than impressionistically.

• The Maharashtra State Mining Corporation was incorporated in 1973 under the Companies Act of 1956, is wholly owned by the state government and is headquartered at Nagpur; its working mines produce industrial minerals including limestone, dolomite, feldspar, fluorite, kyanite and iron ore.
• The Deccan trap basalt covers the greater part of Maharashtra and is poor in metallic minerals, which confines the state's mineral wealth to the margins where the trap gives way to older crystalline and Gondwana rocks, or where lateritic weathering has produced bauxite.
• The eastern districts of the Nagpur division and its neighbours — Nagpur, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli — carry the state's coal, manganese, iron ore, limestone and dolomite, and form the leading mineral region of Maharashtra.
• The Konkan is the second mineral region, with iron ore in Sindhudurg, bauxite on the lateritic cover and silica sand along the coastal belt — the ranking recorded in statement (b) of this question.
• Maharashtra has six revenue divisions — Konkan, Pune, Nashik, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Amravati and Nagpur — so a comparison between the Konkan and Nagpur in a state paper is a comparison between defined administrative units.

• Rejecting a statement because it is unfamiliar rather than because it is wrong; on a bundle item, striking out a statement is a positive claim and requires a reason of its own
• Missing the polarity switch in the last option, which asserts that two statements are NOT correct while the other three assert that statements are correct
• Assuming that a three-statement bundle must contain at least one falsehood — this one contains none, and the expectation of a planted error is itself the trap
• Treating 'Konkan region' and 'Nagpur region' loosely; they are two of Maharashtra's six revenue divisions, and the comparison is between defined administrative units

MPSC's Maharashtra geography block is built on state-specific institutions, policies and rankings — the year a state corporation was set up, which division leads in some resource, what a state policy opened or reserved — and it presents them as three-statement bundles with overlapping combinations. These questions cannot be answered from national-level material at all; they need the state's own economic survey, its policy documents and a district-level map. UPSC's mineral questions are national and conceptual: the distribution of a mineral across states, the significance of a policy change, the geology behind a resource belt. The practical consequence is that this is a genuinely separate preparation stream for MPSC, and the highest-yield single source for it is the Economic Survey of Maharashtra, which is also the document the Commission cites by name elsewhere on this very paper.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following best explains why Maharashtra's mineral production is concentrated in the eastern districts and the Konkan rather than across the state ?

  • (a)The Deccan trap basalt covering most of the state is poor in metallic minerals
  • (b)Mining is prohibited by law in the plateau districts of the Pune and Nashik divisions
  • (c)The state's mineral corporation operates only in those two regions by statute
  • (d)The plateau districts were transferred to Karnataka at the time of reorganisation

  Answer(a) The Deccan trap basalt covering most of the state is poor in metallic minerals — so mineral wealth is confined to the margins where older crystalline and Gondwana rocks appear, in the eastern districts, and to the coastal belt where lateritic weathering has produced bauxite and where iron ore occurs. The distribution is geological rather than administrative or statutory.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Maharashtra State Mining Corporation, a wholly state-owned undertaking working industrial minerals, has its headquarters in which of the following cities ?

  • (a)Mumbai
  • (b)Pune
  • (c)Nagpur
  • (d)Chandrapur

  Answer(c) Nagpur — the corporation was incorporated in 1973 and is based at Nagpur, in the heart of the state's principal mineral belt, where the Deccan trap gives way to older crystalline and Gondwana rocks carrying coal, manganese, iron ore, limestone and dolomite. Its working mines produce industrial minerals including limestone, dolomite, feldspar, fluorite, kyanite and iron ore.