Which one of the following pairs (Aluminium Plant – State) is not correctly matched ?

Question

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Correct — C, Muri – Chhattisgarh. Muri is in Jharkhand, not Chhattisgarh. The Muri works sit in the Ranchi district of Jharkhand, on the Chota Nagpur plateau, and they are an alumina refinery — the stage that converts bauxite into alumina — built to draw on the bauxite of the Lohardaga and Gumla plateau country nearby. The plant was one of the units of the old Indian Aluminium Company (Indal), which Hindalco took control of in June 2000. Chhattisgarh does have a major aluminium centre and that is probably what the examiner expected you to reach for, but it is Korba, the BALCO smelter–power complex, not Muri. The other three pairs are all sound. Alupuram, beside Aluva — the town the question still calls by its old name Alwaye — in Ernakulam district, Kerala, is the site of one of India's earliest aluminium works, placed there for the cheap hydro-electricity of the Western Ghats. Belagavi, the town formerly spelt Belgaum, is in northern Karnataka and is the standard textbook entry for that state's alumina works. And Hirakud is in Sambalpur district, Odisha, where the aluminium smelter and its captive power plant stand beside the great Hirakud dam on the Mahanadi that supplies the electricity. Three correct pairs, one wrong state — the answer is (c).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Correctly matched, so it cannot be the answer. Alupuram lies next to Aluva (Alwaye) in Ernakulam district, Kerala, and its aluminium works — long run by the Indian Aluminium Company — is one of the oldest in the country, sited to use the hydro-electric power of the Western Ghats rather than to sit on a bauxite field.  (b) Correctly matched. Belagavi is simply the current official spelling of Belgaum, the district town in northern Karnataka; the renaming does not move the plant to another state, though it is exactly the kind of change that unsettles candidates working from older textbooks.  (d) Correctly matched, and it is the clearest illustration of why aluminium plants sit where they do. Hirakud is in Sambalpur district, Odisha, and the smelter is there because the Hirakud multipurpose project on the Mahanadi supplies the enormous quantity of electricity that smelting demands.

Concept: Aluminium is made in two distinct stages, and the two stages obey two different location rules. First, bauxite ore is refined into alumina — a bulky, weight-losing process, so refineries are built close to the bauxite mines. Second, alumina is reduced electrolytically to aluminium metal, which is one of the most electricity-hungry operations in all of industry, so smelters are built wherever power is cheap and abundant, even far from the ore. India's map reflects this exactly: refineries at Muri and Lohardaga in Jharkhand, Belagavi in Karnataka, Damanjodi and Lanjigarh in Odisha, close to bauxite; smelters at Hirakud and Angul in Odisha, Renukoot in Uttar Pradesh, Korba in Chhattisgarh and Jharsuguda in Odisha, each anchored to hydel or captive thermal power.

State PCS 2024 Q30 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q30 — Geography PYQ with Answer