Match List I with List II and select the correct answer using the code given below the Lists : List I (Place) A. Lakwa B. Malanjkhand C. Kalakot D. Zawar List II (Mineral) 1. Copper 2. Petroleum 3. Zinc 4. Coal Code : A B C D
- (a)3 4 1 2
- (b)3 1 4 2
- (c)2 1 4 3
- (d)2 4 1 3
Correct — C, 2 1 4 3. Lakwa lies in Sivasagar district of upper Assam, the belt whose economy runs on the oil industry, so A goes with petroleum, item 2. Malanjkhand is in Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh and holds the country's largest single copper deposit, so B goes with copper, item 1. Kalakot is a town in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, noted for its coal mines and for the first thermal power plant in north India, built to burn that coal, so C goes with coal, item 4. Zawar, near Udaipur in Rajasthan, is one of the oldest zinc mining sites in the world and is worked today for zinc and lead, so D goes with zinc, item 3. Reading down, that is 2, 1, 4, 3.
- (a)3 4 1 2 — It begins by sending Lakwa to zinc, which puts an Assam oil town in Rajasthan's mineral belt, and then misplaces the other three as well. Fixing Lakwa as petroleum is enough to eliminate this option in one step.
- (b)3 1 4 2 — Malanjkhand and Kalakot are placed correctly here, with copper and coal, but the two ends are exchanged — Lakwa is given zinc and Zawar petroleum. Zawar is the ancient zinc field of Rajasthan and has nothing to do with oil.
- (d)2 4 1 3 — This is the near miss, and the one most candidates fall for. It gets Lakwa right with petroleum and Zawar right with zinc, but swaps the middle pair, giving Malanjkhand coal and Kalakot copper. Malanjkhand in Madhya Pradesh is the copper mine; Kalakot in Jammu and Kashmir is the coal town.
India's mineral map runs along a few well defined belts. The peninsular shield of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha carries the metallic ores — iron, manganese, copper, bauxite and chromite. Rajasthan carries the lead-zinc lodes of Zawar and Rampura Agucha along with much of the non-metallic wealth. The Gondwana coalfields lie in the Damodar, Son, Mahanadi and Godavari valleys, with small tertiary coal deposits in the north-east and in the Jammu hills. Petroleum comes chiefly from upper Assam, from Gujarat and from the offshore Mumbai High field.
A match-list is won on the pairing you are surest of. Here Zawar with zinc and Malanjkhand with copper are the two anchors, because both are named after the mines rather than after districts, and both appear in question after question. Fix either one and two options fall away immediately. The remaining decision is between Lakwa and Kalakot, and the geography settles it: Assam is oil country, while the Jammu hills at Kalakot carry the coal that once fed a power station built beside it. Notice how the paper hides the near miss in option (d), which gets the two easy pairs right and swaps only the two you might not know.
- Malanjkhand, in Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh, is India's largest single copper deposit; Khetri in Rajasthan and the Singhbhum belt are the other copper areas.
- Zawar, near Udaipur in Rajasthan, is among the oldest zinc mining sites in the world and yields zinc and lead.
- Kalakot in Rajouri district, Jammu and Kashmir, is known for coal mining and for the first thermal power plant of north India.
- Upper Assam, where Lakwa lies in Sivasagar district, is one of India's oldest petroleum provinces, with Digboi as its historic centre.
Reading the four pairs in order gives the code 2, 1, 4, 3.
- Swapping Malanjkhand and Khetri; Malanjkhand is in Madhya Pradesh and Khetri in Rajasthan, though both are copper.
- Placing Zawar with lead alone; the field is worked for zinc and lead together and is usually keyed to zinc.
- Choosing the option that gets the two famous pairs right and quietly swaps the two you are unsure of.
NDA asks you to match mines or towns with minerals, or to spot the pair that is not correctly matched.
Which one of the following Oil Refineries is not located in Assam?
- (a) Tatipaka
- (b) Numaligarh
- (c) Bongaigaon
- (d) Digboi
Answer(a) Tatipaka
The Assam petroleum province that Lakwa belongs to, tested through its refineries instead of its oilfields.
Which one of the following coalfields is not located in Jharkhand?
- (a) Jharia
- (b) Ramgarh
- (c) Deogarh
- (d) Umaria
Answer(d) Umaria
The same place-to-mineral skill applied to coalfields, the other half of the geography this match-list draws on.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Malanjkhand, the site of India's largest copper deposit, is located in which State?
- (a)Rajasthan
- (b)Jharkhand
- (c)Madhya Pradesh
- (d)Karnataka
Answer(c) Madhya Pradesh — the deposit lies in Balaghat district, while Khetri is Rajasthan's copper centre and Singhbhum is Jharkhand's.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Zawar in Rajasthan is best known for the mining of
- (a)iron ore
- (b)zinc and lead
- (c)manganese
- (d)bauxite
Answer(b) zinc and lead — Zawar is one of the world's oldest zinc mining sites and still yields both metals.