In which of the following states of India has major reserves of coal ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, All the above. The Ministry of Coal publishes a state-wise inventory of India's coal resources, and the top of that table settles the question outright. As on 1 April 2023 the figures in billion tonnes were Odisha 100.99, Jharkhand 93.25 and Chhattisgarh 85.26 — the first, second and third ranked states — against a national total of 378.21 billion tonnes. Those three alone hold 279.50 billion tonnes, which is close to 74 per cent of all the coal resources in the country. No fourth state comes near: West Bengal is next at 34.39 billion tonnes, then Madhya Pradesh at 33.56 and Telangana at 23.29. Since each of the three named options is independently and enormously true, the only option that does not understate the position is 'All the above'. This is the reasoning any composite option demands and the reason it is correct here rather than a hedge: you can name each of the three and show it qualifies on its own. Two refinements make the fact worth more than a rank order. First, 'reserve' in the Ministry's table means geological resource, estimated to a depth of 1,200 metres and split under the United Nations Framework Classification into Measured (331), Indicated (332) and Inferred (333) categories — not coal that is proved extractable at today's prices. Second, the leadership depends on which column you read: Odisha leads on total resource, but Jharkhand leads on the Measured column, 60.29 billion tonnes against Odisha's 55.01, which is why older textbooks that call Jharkhand India's first coal state are not simply wrong. On the wider frame, the Ministry records the National Coal Inventory of 2025, published by the Geological Survey of India, as putting India's total coal resource at 400.715 billion tonnes as of 1 April 2025, with lignite separately at 47.37 billion tonnes, spread across 64 explored coalfields — 45 Gondwana and 19 Tertiary.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) True in itself, and therefore wrong as an answer, because the stem asks which states have major reserves and Jharkhand is only one of the three offered that qualify. Its 93.25 billion tonnes place it second on total resource and first on measured resource; the Damodar valley fields — Jharia, Bokaro, Giridih, Karanpura — are the country's principal source of coking coal.  (b) Also true and also incomplete. Chhattisgarh holds 85.26 billion tonnes, third in India, with the Korba, Mand-Raigarh and Hasdeo-Arand fields; over a fifth of India's coal production comes from the state. Choosing it alone throws away the two larger holders on the same list.  (c) The subtlest of the three to reject, because Odisha is in fact the largest holder of all at 100.99 billion tonnes, led by the Talcher and Ib valley fields. A candidate who knows this may pick it precisely because it is the biggest — but the stem does not ask for the biggest, it asks which states have major reserves, and all three do.

Concept: Almost all of India's coal is Gondwana coal, laid down in rift basins along the Damodar, Mahanadi, Son, Godavari and Wardha valleys some 250 million years ago, and that geology is why the resource is concentrated in a diagonal belt across the eastern peninsula rather than spread evenly. The Ministry of Coal's inventory counts 64 explored coalfields, 45 of them Gondwana and 19 Tertiary; the Tertiary fields of the North-East are small and high in sulphur. India's coal is also mostly non-coking and of high ash content, which is why a country holding the world's fifth-largest coal resources still imports coking coal for steelmaking. The vocabulary matters in exams. 'Resource' is the total geological estimate; within it, Measured (331) resources are explored on a close grid, Indicated (332) on a wider one, and Inferred (333) are the least certain. Newspapers and textbooks often call the whole figure 'reserves', which overstates what can actually be mined. Lignite, a lower-rank brown coal, is counted separately — 47.37 billion tonnes — and is concentrated in Tamil Nadu at Neyveli rather than in the three states named here.

State PCS 2024 Q110 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q110 — Geography PYQ with Answer