Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer using the codes given below the lists :
List – I (Coal Fields)
A. Talchir
B. Karnapura
C. Singroli
D. Singreni
List – II (Located)
1. Damoda

Question

Match List – I with List – II and select the correct answer using the codes given below the lists :
List – I (Coal Fields)
A. Talchir
B. Karnapura
C. Singroli
D. Singreni
List – II (Located)
1. Damodar Valley
2. Son Valley
3. Godavari Valley
4. Mahanadi Valley
Codes :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, A-4, B-1, C-2, D-3. Almost all of India's coal is Gondwana coal, and the Gondwana rocks survive in a chain of ancient rift basins that today carry major rivers — which is exactly why India's coalfields are catalogued by river valley. Talcher (printed here as 'Talchir'), in Angul district of Odisha, sits in the Mahanadi valley → 4. Karanpura — the North and South Karanpura fields in the Hazaribagh–Chatra country of Jharkhand — belongs to the Damodar valley group along with Raniganj, Jharia and Bokaro → 1. Singrauli (printed 'Singroli') lies in the Son valley on the Madhya Pradesh–Uttar Pradesh border, spread across Singrauli district of MP and Sonbhadra district of UP → 2. Singareni (printed 'Singreni'), worked by the Singareni Collieries Company in Telangana, is the great field of the Godavari valley → 3. Only option (a) carries all four pairings.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) This shifts every field one place: it puts Talcher in the Godavari valley (that is Singareni's basin), Karanpura in the Son valley (it is a Damodar valley field), Singrauli in the Damodar valley and Singareni in the Mahanadi valley. Not one pair survives.  (c) Wrong on all four counts — Talcher is placed in the Son valley, Karanpura in the Mahanadi valley, Singrauli in the Godavari valley and Singareni in the Damodar valley. It is the exact reverse of the geography: Talcher is Odisha's Mahanadi-basin field and Singareni is peninsular India's Godavari-basin field.  (d) The tempting near-miss: it gets C-2 right (Singrauli in the Son valley) but then swaps the rest — Talcher is put in the Damodar valley, Karanpura in the Godavari valley and Singareni in the Mahanadi valley. Karanpura is a Damodar valley field and Singareni is a Godavari valley field, so three of the four pairs fail.

Concept: India's coal comes in two very different geological packages. About 98 per cent of the reserves are Gondwana coal, formed in the Permian period in long, narrow rift basins that later became the courses of the Damodar, Son, Mahanadi, Godavari and Wardha rivers — so a coalfield's address in India is almost always a river valley. The remaining share is much younger Tertiary coal of the north-east (Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal, Nagaland), which is high in sulphur and lies outside this valley scheme. Learn the Gondwana fields valley by valley and a whole family of matching questions collapses into one map.

State PCS 2019 Q46 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q46 — Geography PYQ with Answer