Odisha is described as the State of Minerals — option 1, as recorded in the Commission’s key.

Why the description fits. Odisha holds a share of India’s reserves out of all proportion to its size, and leads the country in several minerals at once :

The geology behind it. Odisha sits on the ancient rocks of the peninsular shield, and its mineral wealth belongs to two systems: the iron-ore series of the Precambrian, which supplies the iron, manganese and chromite, and the Gondwana basins of the Mahanadi valley, which supply the coal. The combination of ore and coal in one state is what made it the natural home of aluminium smelting at Nalco and Vedanta and of steel at Rourkela.

A note on the alternatives. Jharkhand, option 4, is equally famous for minerals — coal at Jharia, iron in Singhbhum, mica in Koderma, copper and uranium at Jaduguda — and is also called a mineral-rich state; the phrase “Ruhr of India” is applied to the Damodar valley within it. Bihar lost almost all of its mineral belt when Jharkhand was separated in 2000, so it is now among the poorest states in minerals, and option 3 can be rejected on that ground alone.

The wider point for a state examination : the eastern mineral belt running through Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and eastern Madhya Pradesh contains the great bulk of India’s coal, iron ore, bauxite and manganese, and its boundaries follow the old shield rocks rather than any modern political line.

Hence, the answer is Orissa.