Observe the following statements.
(a) As per the State Mineral Policy 1999, iron, sulphur, gold, copper and lead mineral production was opened to the private sector.
(b) Konkan region has the highest

Question

Observe the following statements.
(a) As per the State Mineral Policy 1999, iron, sulphur, gold, copper and lead mineral production was opened to the private sector.
(b) Konkan region has the highest mineral availability after Nagpur region.
(c) Maharashtra State Mining Corporation was established in 1973.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) 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.  (b) 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.  (d) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2026 Q17 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q17 — Geography PYQ with Answer