The Ministry of Mines will call bids for over 100 critical minerals blocks from February. Apart from onshore minerals, offshore minerals will also be put up for auction, Union Minister of Mines Pralhad Joshi said during the launch event of the National Geoscience Data Repository (NGDR) portal.
"More than 100 blocks of strategic and critical minerals will be brought for auction next year before February, and these blocks are ready with us," Joshi said.
“Around 15 offshore blocks will also be auctioned in March,” Joshi added.
The announcement comes nearly three weeks after India initiated the process to auction 20 blocks of critical minerals, including the 5.9-million-tonne (mt) lithium reserves discovered in Jammu & Kashmir’s Reasi district. The collective value of these 20 blocks was estimated at Rs 45,000 crore.