Jhumri Telaiya - History

History

Jhumri Telaiya was once a major mica mining centre. While laying a railroad through Koderma in 1890s, the British first discovered vast mica deposits in the region. Mining activities started soon after and many mining houses were established. CH Private Ltd. of Chatu Ram Bhadani and Horil Ram Bhadani was the predecessor of Mica Kings, which controlled the largest share of mica mining and export activity in the world at a time but CH were not form beginning before them there was a company of father and son named Ramananda Sitaram Shah in which both father Ramananda and son Sitaram had the most abundent mica mining areas but because of Britisher whose faith in money took the Mica King title from them and given to CHs'from which RamaNanda got paralised but SitaRam didn't lost his will and continue further and made a great empire.

Prosperous businessmen built huge mansions in Jhumri Telaiya. Till late 1960s, Mercedes and Porsche cars, and thoroughbreds from Arabia used to be common in Jhumri Taliya. The city once boasted of most number of phone connections and phone calls made in India. Most of the mica business, except Mica Kings, was moved to the government-owned corporations sometime in 1973-74 through a government venture called as Bihar Mica Syndicate which was having Mica mines in Sapahi, 40 km from Jhumri Telaiya. This government venture was renamed to Bihar State Mineral Development corporation (BSMDC), which is now known as Jharkhand State Mineral Development corporation.

Most of the mica used to be exported to USSR, for space and military equipment. With the dissolution of the USSR and the discovery of a synthetic substitute for mica, the mining activity declined in 1990s.

The city was earlier a part of the Hazaribagh district, and was transferred to the newly-created Koderma district on 10 April 1994. Originally a part of the Bihar state, Jhumri Telaiya became the part of the newly-formed Jharkhand state in 2000. On 8 December 2008, the Jhumri Tilaiya municipality was declared as a minor urban area.