The Panchpatmali hills in the Koraput district of Odisha are famous for deposits of:

The Panchpatmali hills are located in the Koraput district of southern Odisha, in the Eastern Ghats. They contain one of the largest bauxite deposits in India and in the world.

Bauxite is the main ore of aluminium. It is a clay-like rock consisting mainly of hydrated aluminium oxides, along with iron oxides, silica and other impurities. Bauxite is formed by intense weathering and leaching of rocks rich in aluminium silicates in tropical and subtropical areas with heavy rainfall. This is why bauxite is often found in laterite soils, on the flat tops of hills and plateaus.

The Panchpatmali bauxite mines are operated by the National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO), a Navratna public sector company set up in 1981, with its headquarters in Bhubaneswar. The mined bauxite is sent to NALCO's alumina refinery at Damanjodi, near Koraput. The alumina (aluminium oxide) is then transported to its aluminium smelter at Angul, where aluminium is produced by electrolysis. Extracting aluminium needs very large amounts of electricity, so aluminium plants are usually located near cheap sources of power, such as the coal-based captive power plant at Angul.

Odisha is the largest producer of bauxite in India, accounting for more than half of the country's production. Other important bauxite-producing states are Jharkhand, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Other important deposits include the Amarkantak plateau (Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh), the Maikal hills and the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha, where proposed mining was opposed by the Dongria Kondh tribe and stopped after gram sabhas rejected it in 2013.

Aluminium is a light, strong metal that resists corrosion. It is used in aircraft, vehicles, utensils, electrical wires and packaging.

Why not the other options?

• ✗Iron ore is found at Bailadila (Chhattisgarh), Noamundi (Jharkhand) and Keonjhar (Odisha).
• ✗Mica is found mainly in Jharkhand (Koderma), Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan.
• ✗Manganese is found in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh (Balaghat) and Maharashtra.