Identify the oldest iron and steel company of India from the following options.

Correct — B. The Tata Iron and Steel Company was registered in 1907 and began making steel at Sakchi, later renamed Jamshedpur, in 1912.

The others are later. The Indian Iron and Steel Company dates from 1918, and the Bhadravati works in Mysore from 1923 — and that single Bhadravati plant is what two of the choices name, under its old name and its later one.

So option (b) is the earliest company in the list.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Mysore Iron & Steel Works — Mysore Iron Works at Bhadravati dates from 1923, sixteen years after Tata's company. It was set up by the princely state of Mysore, with Sir M. Visvesvaraya behind it.
• (c)
  Visvesvaraiya Iron & Steel Works — Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel is the later name of that same Bhadravati plant, so it cannot be older than the works it renames.
• (d)
  Indian Iron & Steel Company (IISCO) — IISCO, the Indian Iron and Steel Company, was registered in 1918 at Burnpur in Bengal, eleven years after Tata's.

Iron and steel is where economic geography meets modern history: the same company answers a question on private-sector industry and a question on colonial industrialisation.

TISCO, 1907, is the anchor date. Jamsetji Tata planned it, the plant rose at Sakchi in the Chhotanagpur belt near iron ore, coal and water, and the town became Jamshedpur.

Public-sector steel came much later, with the plants of the second five-year plan and the eventual creation of the Steel Authority of India.

Key facts

• The Tata Iron and Steel Company was registered in 1907 and started producing steel in 1912.
• Its plant was built at Sakchi, which was renamed Jamshedpur.
• The Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO) was registered in 1918, at Burnpur in Bengal.
• The Mysore Iron Works at Bhadravati, founded in 1923, was later renamed Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel.

Common traps

• Two of the choices are one Bhadravati plant under two names, so neither can win a question asking for a single oldest.
• TISCO now trades as Tata Steel, and a newer company name does not move the 1907 date.

No directly related past PYQ was found.