Eastern Bengal and Assam Eastern Bengal and Assam Eastern Bengal and Assam was an administrative subdivision (province) of the British Raj between 1905 and 1912. Headquartered in the city of Dacca, it covered territories in what are now Bangladesh, Northeast India and Northern West Bengal. As early as 1868, British administrators saw the need for an independent administration in the eastern portion of the Bengal Presidency. They felt that Fort William in Calcutta, the capital of British India, was already overburdened. By 1903, it dawned on the colonial government on the necesscity of partitioning Bengal and creating prospects for Assam's commercial expansion. The British
Geography of West Bengal at places. West Bengal stands third in the country in terms of mineral production. The state contributes about one-fifth to the total production of minerals in the country. Coal constitutes 99% of the minerals extracted in West Bengal; fireclay, china clay, limestone, copper, iron, wolfram, manganese and dolomite are mined in small quantities. There are good possibilities of obtaining mineral oil and natural gas in the areas near the Bay of Bengal, in Purba Medinipur, Sundarbans, South 24 Parganas and North Bengal plains. Research is ongoing in various places to locate natural gas. West Bengal is the third largest state