NE has significant untapped deposits of mineral resources: GSI

Time of India

3 days ago

Guwahati: The northeastern region, traditionally known for its hydrocarbon reserves, has revealed significant untapped deposits of diverse mineral resources, including critical and strategic minerals.
These have gained unprecedented importance in the evolving global context of clean energy transition, digital infrastructure, and defence manufacturing, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) reported.
Additionally, explorations have also revealed potential deposits of graphite, vanadium, base metals, gold, coal, and limestone. In the current worldwide shift towards clean energy, digital systems, and defence production, critical and strategic minerals have become increasingly vital.
These essential resources, which include rare earth elements (REE), graphite, vanadium, lithium, cobalt, and additional minerals, serve as fundamental components in batteries, permanent magnets, semiconductors, and sophisticated alloys.
"India's growing demand for such resources underscores the need to identify and develop domestic sources, particularly in geologically promising regions such as the North East," the GSI underlined in its handbook on "Geological Potential of North East India," which was released at the 2nd North-East Mining Ministers' Conclave here.
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The report said in Arunachal Pradesh, GSI's exploration resulted in the establishment of a vanadium resource totalling 13.79 million tonnes, marking India's first major resource of this critical alloying element. The importance of vanadium lies in its applications in aerospace alloys and increasingly, in vanadium redox flow batteries, a scalable solution for grid-level energy storage.
The REEs — grouped into light and heavy categories — are indispensable in modern electronics, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and defence systems.
GSI's investigations have revealed promising REE anomalies across Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Meghalaya. Among the other emerging critical minerals — lithium, cobalt, and bauxite — preliminary geochemical indications of lithium have been recorded in brine-rich environments in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, as well as Precambrian gneiss in Assam.
"While still in early stages of investigation, these occurrences merit further exploration, especially given India's dependency on lithium imports," the report said.
Nickel and cobalt, associated with ophiolite complexes in Nagaland and Manipur, are being targeted through detailed geochemical surveys and petrographic studies, while bauxite, primarily of lateritic origin, is found in Meghalaya (West Khasi Hills), the report added.
The report also stated that GSI has established a resource of over 17.89 million tonnes of graphite with significant grades in Arunachal Pradesh, making it viable feedstock for downstream beneficiation and high-value applications such as lithium-ion battery anodes and refractory applications.
While Arunachal Pradesh and Assam have emerged as promising zones for graphite, vanadium, REEs, base metals, gold, coal, and limestone, Meghalaya and Nagaland hold extensive resources of limestone, coal, and minor strategic metals, according to the report.
GSI found valuable iron ore deposits with an estimated resource of 18.29 million tonnes at Chandardinga area in Dhubri district, while glass sand with high silica content has been identified in Nagaon and Karbi Anglong districts, and placer gold has been recorded from the Subansiri River basin in upper Assam.
In Manipur, chromite has been identified in Ukhrul district, and clay and lignite deposits in Kangvai Valley.
The report added that mineral resources of Mizoram are limited, primarily due to the region's young geology and limited extent of exposed basement rocks, but "potential exists for hydrocarbons, clay, and construction grade materials." Known more for its oil and natural gas potential, Tripura has a modest inventory of solid minerals, the report said, adding that although Sikkim has traditionally not been known for large-scale mineralisation, small-scale occurrences of copper, lead-zinc, graphite, etc have been reported in the lesser Himalayan terrain.