Govt plans to Auction 280 Mines worth Rs 10 lakh crore in the next Fiscal

Union Government has planned to put as many as 280 mines with a mineral wealth of over Rs 10 lakh crore to auction in the next fiscal, said Mines Secretary Balvinder Kumar.  The auction of the 83 mines which are under litigation depends upon the outcome of legal process.

Kumar told that the drone technology will be used for monitoring of mining in any area which will help preparing topography maps in few hours, which takes a long time while doing manually. IBM will start this.

He also stated that the technology will save the time which is consumed in manual inspection. “We can also verify the claims of industry. For instance, they are saying that they have mined 10 lakh tonnes of mineral. We would be able to know about the exact quantity in one hour using drone. This will be used for new as well as old mines”, he said.

As many as 21 mining leases have already been auctioned so far with a cumulative resource value of around Rs 94,000 crore.

The Mines Ministry has already facilitated the auction process extending support from IBM and Geological Survey of India (GSI), and various PSUs such as MSTC, MECON, MECL and SBICAP.

Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are among the states preparing for auction of mineral blocks like iron ore, bauxite and limestone in the next financial year.