MPSC 2026 Prelims Paper-I · Question 18 of 100

Correct — option (1): Gadchiroli 20.8 per cent, Nagpur 12.5, Dhule 10.4 and Thane 9.5, the shares reported in the Economic Survey of Maharashtra for 2024, which the stem itself cites as its source. A candidate who has not memorised four percentages can still answer this, and the route matters more than the figures. Only one of the four values is much larger than the rest, and only one of the four circles is an obvious candidate for it: Gadchiroli. The district is the most heavily forested part of Maharashtra, lying in the far east of Vidarbha where the teak-bearing dry deciduous forest runs unbroken across the Chhattisgarh border, and its circle taking a fifth of the state's entire forest area is exactly what the map predicts. Assign the largest share to Gadchiroli and only one printed option survives — option (1) is the only one containing (a)-(ii), the other three sending Gadchiroli to 10.4, to 9.5 and to 12.5 respectively. That single ordinal judgment, largest forest circle gets largest share, decides the whole item without a percentage being recalled. There is a second structural clue worth noticing once the item is solved. The left-hand column is printed in descending order of share — Gadchiroli, then Nagpur, then Dhule, then Thane, that is 20.8, 12.5, 10.4, 9.5 — so the correct mapping assigns the four values in strictly decreasing order down the column. That is not a rule to rely on blindly, because a setter can print the column in any order, but where it holds it converts a numerical matching item into an ordering one. Note also the arithmetic: these four circles together account for a little over half the state's forest area, so several other circles carry the remainder.

• (2)(a) - (iv), (b) - (i), (c) - (iii), (d) - (ii) — Keeps Nagpur at 12.5, which is right, and then rotates the other three, giving Gadchiroli 10.4, Dhule 9.5 and Thane the largest share at 20.8. The last of those is what retires it. Thane circle covers the northern Konkan, a densely settled and heavily urbanised belt on a narrow coastal strip; it cannot plausibly hold a fifth of Maharashtra's entire forest area when Gadchiroli, the least populated and most thickly wooded district in the state, is standing in the same column. Testing the largest value against the most obviously forested unit is the single check that disposes of this option and of two others.
• (3)(a) - (iii), (b) - (ii), (c) - (iv), (d) - (i) — Gives Gadchiroli the smallest share of the four, 9.5, and the largest to Nagpur. Nagpur circle is genuinely a major forest region — the eastern Vidarbha belt as a whole carries the bulk of Maharashtra's forest — so the option is not absurd, and a candidate who knows only that 'Vidarbha has the forests' may accept it. What separates the two is that Nagpur is a large urban and administrative centre whose surrounding districts are substantially cultivated, while Gadchiroli is the state's least disturbed forest tract. Ranking within a region, and not merely identifying the region, is what this option is testing.
• (4)(a) - (i), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iv) — Assigns the largest share, 20.8, to Dhule, and gives Gadchiroli 12.5 and Nagpur 9.5. Dhule lies in the north-western part of the state, in the Khandesh plain and the Satpura foothills, and while it carries genuine forest it is not remotely the state's largest forest circle. The option also demotes both of the eastern Vidarbha circles below a north-western one, which inverts the basic pattern of Maharashtra's forest map: forest cover rises sharply towards the east and along the Sahyadri crest, and falls across the cultivated interior plateau. One glance at that pattern is enough.

Maharashtra's forests are distributed in two arcs with a cultivated interior between them. The eastern arc, in Vidarbha, is much the larger: Gadchiroli, Chandrapur, Gondia and Bhandara carry teak-bearing dry deciduous forest that continues into Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, and this belt holds most of the state's timber, most of its tiger habitat and most of its tribal population. The western arc runs along the Sahyadri crest and down its seaward face, where higher rainfall produces moist deciduous and patches of semi-evergreen forest, and where the Western Ghats are recognised as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Between them the Deccan plateau districts, long cultivated and comparatively dry, carry relatively little. The forest department administers this territory through territorial forest circles, which are administrative units rather than ecological ones, and the Economic Survey of Maharashtra reports their shares of the state's forest area each year — which is the table this question is quarried from. It is worth keeping two measures distinct: recorded forest area, which is a legal and administrative category, and forest cover as measured from satellite imagery in the Forest Survey of India's biennial report, which counts trees on the ground regardless of legal status.

The examinable skill here is converting a numerical matching item into an ordinal one. Four percentages against four administrative units look like a memory test, but they rarely are: if one value stands well clear of the others and one unit stands well clear of the others, the pairing is forced, and the remaining assignments follow from the surviving option rather than from recall. That reduces the preparation burden from four numbers to one fact — which forest circle is the largest — and the same reduction works on most rank-and-share tables in a state paper. The second habit is to read the printed order of the left-hand column, which here happens to descend from largest to smallest share; where a setter has laid the column out in rank order, the correct option is simply the one that assigns the values monotonically. Treat that as a check rather than a rule. And note the source named in the stem: the Economic Survey of Maharashtra, tabled in the state legislature each year, is the single highest-yield document for questions of this kind, because the Commission quarries it directly and says so.

• The Economic Survey of Maharashtra for 2024 gives the shares of the state's total forest area as Gadchiroli 20.8 per cent, Nagpur 12.5, Dhule 10.4 and Thane 9.5 — the four circles together accounting for a little over half the state's forest area.
• Gadchiroli, in the far east of Vidarbha, is the most heavily forested part of Maharashtra; its teak-bearing dry deciduous forest continues unbroken into Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, and the district is the least densely settled in the state.
• Maharashtra's forests lie in two arcs — the eastern Vidarbha belt of Gadchiroli, Chandrapur, Gondia and Bhandara, and the western Sahyadri belt along the Ghat crest and its seaward slopes — with a long-cultivated and comparatively dry plateau interior between them.
• Forest circles are administrative units of the state forest department, not ecological regions, and their shares are reported annually in the Economic Survey of Maharashtra, which this question names as its source.
• Recorded forest area and forest cover are different measures: the first is a legal and administrative category, the second is measured from satellite imagery in the Forest Survey of India's biennial State of Forest Report and counts trees on the ground regardless of legal status.

• Treating a percentage-matching item as a memory test when it is usually an ordering test — identify which unit must take the largest value and the option is often forced
• Assuming that because eastern Vidarbha holds most of Maharashtra's forest, the Nagpur circle must lead it; Gadchiroli is the least disturbed and most thickly wooded tract in the state
• Confusing recorded forest area with forest cover: the Economic Survey's circle-wise shares are of the state's forest area, while the Forest Survey of India measures cover from satellite imagery
• Overlooking the source named in the stem — where the Commission cites the Economic Survey of Maharashtra by name, it is telling you which document the year's data questions came from

MPSC draws data questions directly from the Economic Survey of Maharashtra and often says so in the stem, as it does here. The favoured format is a four-way matching of administrative units against shares, ranks or absolute values, and the same treatment appears for districts, divisions, crops, irrigation projects and state finances. These items look forbidding and are usually decided by a single ordinal fact, so the preparation that pays is knowing which unit leads each table rather than memorising every row. UPSC does not ask state-level tables at all; its forest questions concern law, conservation policy and national data from the State of Forest Report. That makes this another area where MPSC preparation has to be built separately, and the Economic Survey is the cheapest way to build it because it is one document covering many of the paper's data questions.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which district of Maharashtra carries the largest extent of forest and lies at the centre of the state's principal teak-bearing dry deciduous forest belt ?

  • (a)Thane
  • (b)Dhule
  • (c)Gadchiroli
  • (d)Kolhapur

  Answer(c) Gadchiroli — in the far east of Vidarbha, the least densely settled district in Maharashtra, whose forests continue unbroken into Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and whose forest circle accounts for the largest share of the state's forest area. Thane lies in the northern Konkan, Dhule in the Khandesh plain and Satpura foothills, and Kolhapur along the southern Sahyadri.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is NOT among the tiger reserves located in the State of Maharashtra ?

  • (a)Melghat
  • (b)Tadoba-Andhari
  • (c)Simlipal
  • (d)Sahyadri

  Answer(c) Simlipal — this reserve is in Odisha, not Maharashtra. Melghat in Amravati district, Tadoba-Andhari in Chandrapur and Sahyadri in the southern Western Ghats are all Maharashtra tiger reserves, as are Pench, Nawegaon-Nagzira and Bor, and their distribution mirrors the state's two forest arcs — the eastern Vidarbha belt and the Sahyadri crest.