Baihar plateau of Balaghat is known for which mineral deposits?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, bauxite. The Baihar plateau is the high, flat-topped upland in the eastern part of Balaghat district, and like the other bauxite tracts of Madhya Pradesh it owes its deposits to laterite. Under a hot, seasonally wet tropical climate, silica and the soluble bases are steadily leached out of aluminium-bearing parent rock on a flat, well-drained upland surface, leaving behind a residual crust of hydrated aluminium oxides — bauxite. That is why the state's bauxite is found capping elevated plateau surfaces (Katni, Shahdol–Anuppur, Mandla, Jabalpur and the Baihar plateau of Balaghat) rather than in valleys, and why the question deliberately names a plateau.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) India's lead–zinc mining is concentrated in Rajasthan — Rampura Agucha and the Zawar belt. Madhya Pradesh has no zinc mining of any consequence, so this option is out on state grounds alone.  (b) India's major iron-ore belts lie in Chhattisgarh (Bailadila), Odisha, Jharkhand and Karnataka. Iron ore is not what the Baihar plateau is identified with, and Balaghat's mineral reputation rests on copper, manganese and the plateau's bauxite instead.  (c) The strongest distractor, because Balaghat district genuinely is one of Madhya Pradesh's dolomite-producing districts and the state is a leading dolomite producer nationally. But dolomite is a sedimentary carbonate rock worked from limestone belts, not from a laterite-capped upland; it is the Baihar plateau specifically — the elevated, laterite-covered surface — that is identified with bauxite.

Concept: Bauxite is the principal ore of aluminium, and it is a residual deposit rather than a vein or a bedded one. Prolonged chemical weathering in a warm, humid climate with a marked dry season strips silica, calcium, sodium and potassium out of aluminium-rich rock and concentrates the insoluble aluminium (and iron) oxides in place — the process of laterisation. Flat plateau tops give the two things laterisation needs, free drainage and a stable surface, which is why bauxite in India occurs as cappings on uplands: Panchpatmali and the Kalahandi–Koraput belt in Odisha, the Amarkantak–Maikal surfaces and the Baihar plateau in central India.

State PCS 2026 Q73 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q73 — Madhya Pradesh GK PYQ with Answer