💰 Economy & FinanceMAINS · GS3.8

Record 212 mineral blocks auctioned in 2025-26

A Mines Ministry review reports the highest single-year mineral-block auctions since the 2015 auction regime began.

What happened

The Secretary, Ministry of Mines, chaired the 9th monthly Review Meeting with senior officials and the Category-A mineral-bearing States to track the progress of mineral-block auctions and the operationalisation of awarded blocks.
In FY2025-26 alone, a record 212 mineral blocks were auctioned — the highest number in any single financial year since the competitive auction regime was introduced in 2015.
The 212 blocks include 22 critical and strategic mineral blocks, the category that India is racing to develop to cut import dependence.
During FY2025-26, 36 blocks were operationalised — 28 greenfield (fresh, unworked deposits) and 8 brownfield (previously explored or mined) — a sharp jump in conversion from paper award to working mine.
The review compared this with 58 blocks operationalised across the entire FY2015-16 to FY2024-25 period, underlining how the recent year compressed nearly a decade's operationalisation into twelve months.
The Secretary stressed Centre–State coordination to expedite statutory clearances and underscored critical-mineral development for Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India).

Background & context

Before 2015, mineral concessions in India were largely granted on a first-come-first-served discretionary basis. That regime drew sustained criticism — it concentrated mineral wealth, left little of the resource rent with the public exchequer, and was a recurring subject of audit and judicial scrutiny. The legal turning point was the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015, which amended the parent MMDR Act of 1957 and made auction the mandatory route for granting mineral concessions for most major minerals. From that point, a mining lease or a composite licence is awarded to the bidder offering the highest share of the value of mineral despatched to the State — a transparent, revenue-maximising process replacing administrative allotment.

The 2015 amendment also created two instruments that recur in exam questions. First, the District Mineral Foundation (DMF), a non-profit trust in every mining-affected district funded by a statutory levy on lease-holders, whose money is spent on the welfare of communities and areas hit by mining — the scheme through which DMF money is channelled is the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana (PMKKKY). Second, the National Mineral Exploration Trust (NMET), which funds regional and detailed mineral exploration. Together with the auction rule, these turned mining into a regime that is meant to be transparent, to fund local development, and to fund exploration.

The release sits in a longer reform arc. The MMDR Amendment Act, 2021 removed the distinction between captive and merchant mines and freed up clearances; the MMDR Amendment Act, 2023 went further on the strategic front — it omitted six minerals (including lithium and titanium-bearing minerals) from the list of atomic minerals so they could be auctioned to the private sector, and it empowered the Central Government to auction certain critical and strategic mineral blocks directly (such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, the platinum-group elements and rare-earth-bearing blocks), rather than leaving them to the States. The 22 critical-and-strategic blocks named in this review are the visible output of that 2023 change, and they connect to the National Critical Mineral Mission, the government's umbrella effort to secure the minerals that batteries, semiconductors, defence systems and the clean-energy transition depend on.

It helps to place the mineral-block process against its closest cousin, the coal-block auction. Both are auction regimes that replaced discretionary allotment, but they run on different legal tracks and different ministries. Coal blocks are auctioned by the Ministry of Coal (with commercial coal mining opened to the private sector from 2020 under the framework built on the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015 and the MMDR Act), whereas the 212 blocks in this review are non-coal mineral blocks auctioned under the Ministry of Mines process, where the State Governments are the principal auctioning authority for major minerals and the Centre handles the critical-and-strategic category. Minor minerals — sand, ordinary stone, brick-earth and the like — are a third, separate track governed by the State Governments under rules they frame themselves. Knowing which authority auctions what is the classic "match the pairs" trap in this topic.

India's own mineral standing frames why this matters. The country is among the world's leading producers of several bulk minerals — it is a major global producer of iron ore, bauxite, chromite and manganese ore and a substantial coal producer — yet for the high-value critical minerals that the energy transition needs, it has historically been heavily import-dependent. The auction surge is the supply-side attempt to convert known and newly explored deposits into domestic output, supported on the exploration side by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) (the nodal body for regional and detailed exploration) and the Mineral Exploration and Consultancy Limited (MECL), with NMET money backing exploration that de-risks blocks before they are put to auction.

For Prelims

Auction regime since: 2015, via the MMDR (Amendment) Act, 2015, which amended the parent MMDR Act, 1957 and made auction the mandatory method of granting mineral concessions.
Nodal ministry: Ministry of Mines; the auctioning of major-mineral blocks is conducted largely by the mineral-bearing State Governments, with critical/strategic blocks auctionable by the Centre after the 2023 amendment.
FY2025-26 record: 212 blocks auctioned — the highest in a single year — of which 22 were critical and strategic mineral blocks.
The auction trend in three phases: 108 blocks in FY2015-16 to FY2020-21; 364 blocks in FY2021-22 to FY2024-25 (about 90 per year); then the 212-block surge in FY2025-26.
Operationalisation FY2025-26: 36 blocks made operational — 28 greenfield + 8 brownfield — versus 58 over the whole prior decade.
Greenfield vs brownfield: a greenfield block is a fresh, previously unworked deposit; a brownfield block has prior exploration or mining history. The distinction is the kind of "what is the difference" fact UPSC favours.
The 2015 Act's twin institutions: the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) — funded through the PMKKKY scheme for mining-affected communities — and the National Mineral Exploration Trust (NMET) for exploration funding.
Critical & strategic minerals route: the MMDR Amendment Act, 2023 lets the Centre auction blocks of minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, PGEs and rare earths, and removed six minerals from the atomic-minerals list to open them to private auction. This links to the National Critical Mineral Mission.
Royalty & rent: royalty rates on minerals are fixed by the Central Government (revisable not more than once in three years under the MMDR Act); auctions add a premium (the auction-determined percentage) on top of statutory royalty.
What it is NOT: the 212-block figure is the number of blocks auctioned in the year, not the number put into production — operationalisation (36 blocks) is a separate, much smaller figure, and the two must not be conflated. The auction regime is also not a scheme with an outlay; it is a statutory grant method. Coal blocks are auctioned under a separate law and ministry (the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act and the MMDR provisions administered for coal by the Ministry of Coal), not under this Mines-Ministry mineral-block process.

For UPSC: Mineral-block auctions became mandatory under the MMDR Amendment Act, 2015; FY2025-26 set a single-year record of 212 blocks auctioned (22 of them critical/strategic), and the 2023 amendment lets the Centre directly auction critical-mineral blocks. Auctioned (212) ≠ operationalised (36).

Why it matters

Mineral security has moved from a domestic-revenue question to a question of strategic autonomy. The minerals that the auction surge is reaching for — lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, the rare earths and platinum-group elements — are the inputs of batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar equipment, semiconductors and defence hardware. India currently imports the bulk of these, and global supply of several is concentrated in a small handful of countries, which makes the supply chain a point of leverage for others. By auctioning a record 212 blocks, 22 of them critical and strategic, the government is trying to build a domestic upstream base so that the downstream manufacturing it is courting — cell manufacturing, EVs, electronics — is not hostage to imported raw material.

The second reason it matters is the auction-to-operation gap. An auctioned block is only a legal right; it becomes a working mine years later, after environmental and forest clearances, land acquisition, and infrastructure. The review's own numbers admit the gap — 212 auctioned but only 36 operationalised in the year — which is precisely why the Secretary pressed for Centre–State coordination on statutory clearances. That admission is the kind of self-stated problem a Mains answer can deploy: the bottleneck is no longer the grant of the block but the clearances and capacity to convert it into output.

For Mains

Substantiation

Use the three-phase auction trend — 108 blocks (2015-16 to 2020-21), 364 blocks (2021-22 to 2024-25, ~90/year), and the record 212 in 2025-26 — as hard data showing the maturing of the post-2015 auction regime and the acceleration in mineral-sector reform.

Exemplification

Cite the 22 critical-and-strategic blocks and the 2023 amendment empowering central auction of lithium/cobalt/rare-earth blocks as a concrete example of India operationalising mineral security and Aatmanirbhar Bharat in a strategic-resource sector.

Problematisation

The release's own gap — 212 blocks auctioned but only 36 operationalised in the year, with 58 over the prior decade — illustrates that the binding constraint has shifted from allotment to statutory clearances, land and infrastructure: a structural reform that still has not closed the loop.

Way-forward

The stated emphasis on Centre–State coordination to fast-track statutory clearances is a usable way-forward line for questions on accelerating extractive-sector investment and reducing the lead time from auction to production.

Deploys into: GS3.8 — liberalisation, industrial policy and the changing role of the State; resource governance, mineral security and critical-mineral supply chains; Centre–State coordination in clearances.

Ministry of Mines · 2026-05-25 · PRID 2265021 · PIB source ↗