IA record 212 mineral blocks went under the hammer in a single year, including 22 critical mineral blocks in FY2025-26 alone, and the rules governing that auction have themselves been amended twice in the same period. Lex Terrae helps bidders and operators keep pace with a framework that is still being rewritten as it’s being used.
Mining in India now runs on the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, substantially reshaped by the MMDR Amendment Act, 2025, which expanded the list of critical and strategic minerals to 24 under Part D of Schedule I, reserving their auction exclusively to the Central Government, and allowed leaseholders to add such minerals to existing leases without additional royalty. Bidding itself runs through the Online Unified Mining Portal, the electronic platform through which blocks are listed, bids submitted, and Letters of Intent now automatically generated once a preferred bidder’s payment and performance security are received. We advise on lease structuring, exploration licence applications, auction participation, and compliance under the successive rounds of Mineral Concession and Mineral Auction Rules amendments.
The pace of change here is the compliance risk in itself: the Mineral (Auction) Second Amendment Rules, 2026 introduced insurance surety bonds as an alternative to bank guarantees and new provisions for excluding peripheral portions of a block from a lease, changes that came barely months after the previous amendment round. A bidder’s obligations at the time of application can differ from what applied even one auction cycle earlier, and a lease structured under an older rule set may need revisiting once a new one takes effect.Â
We help clients track that pace and structure their participation, and their post-award obligations, against the rules actually in force rather than the ones that were in force when they last checked.