The Ministry of Mines made the classification based on the recommendation of an inter-ministerial committee on mines and minerals, chaired by NITI Aayog member Dr VK Saraswat. The ministry has clarified that the reclassification of these minerals will not adversely affect the duration of existing leases, and revenue will continue to accrue to the state government as before.
Under the new classification, the leases for major minerals will be extended by 50 years from the date of grant or until the completion of the renewal period, whichever is later, as per Section 8A of the MMDR Act, 1957. These mines will gradually need to register with the Indian Bureau of Mines and be regulated as major minerals. A transition period of four months, until June 30, 2025, has been provided.
Quartz, felspar, and mica are found in pegmatite rocks, which are an important source of many critical minerals like beryl, lithium, niobium, tantalum, molybdenum, tin, titanium, and tungsten. Critical minerals play a vital role in technologies related to electric vehicles (EVs), energy transition, spacecraft industries, and healthcare.
Baryte also has several industrial applications in oil and gas drilling, electronics, TV screens, rubber, glass, ceramics, paint, radiation shielding, and high-density concrete to block x-ray emissions in hospitals, power plants, and laboratories. Baryte often occurs as concretions and vein fillings in limestone and dolostone, and is found in association with ores of antimony, cobalt, copper, lead, manganese, and silver. Baryte with iron ore occurs in pocket-type deposits that cannot be mined in isolation, implying that the production of the associated mineral is inevitable while mining either of the minerals.
Until now, when the leases for quartz, felspar, and mica were granted as minor mineral leases, the leaseholders neither declared the existence of critical minerals nor extracted them, as their primary objective was to use them as minor minerals for construction, glass, and ceramic making. Consequently, the critical minerals associated with these minerals were neither being extracted nor reported.
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