Sunil Thakur, a 24-year-old engineering graduate, was once planning to pursue a career as a civil engineer. But jobs were scarce, and so Thakur spent his days frying samosas at his family’s snack shop in Salal, a picturesque mountain village of about 10,000 in India’s northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Then, in February 2023, Thakur’s dreams of prosperity were suddenly revived.

India’s mining ministry informed the villagers that they were sitting on a fortune: 5.9 million metric tons of lithium, a silver-white metal that is a key component of batteries needed for India’s transition to clean energy.

Mine officials said that this discovery, a first in India, will make the country the fifth largest lithium reserve in the world. announced. Indian media organizations rejoice reported Companies like Mitsubishi, Tesla and Ola Electric are monitoring the reserve, he said.

Thakur and his family began dreaming of selling their land for “a duplex house in a big city in India and a lot of cash.” He first dreamed of investing in the family business founded by his grandfather nearly forty years ago.

Two years later nothing happened. The government tried to do this Auction lithium block twice in MarchIt failed both times due to a lack of bidders. Landing plans were halted indefinitely.

There were many red flags surrounding the auction, according to PV Rao, a senior geologist in the mining industry who represents India at the International Reporting Standards Committee on Mineral Reserves, a forum that sets standards for exploration results.

Rao and other industry experts said the amount of lithium in the Salal reserve was much less than initially reported. Rest of the World. They just said that 0.02 million tons Lithium carbonate is present in the ore body at a fraction of levels seen in other large reserves. Secondly, the reserve contains minerals in the form of clay deposits that are difficult to extract commercially.

According to Rao, the geological report prepared by the government did not contain sufficient information about the reserve to meet international standards. “This report is (a) very, very skeletal type of report with limited information on which the proposals are based,” he said, adding that ancestry reports produced by the Indian government often contain “misleading and grossly inadequate” information.

“It was irresponsible for the government to act this way. This is actually nothing but hiding the facts,” Rao said. “Are you trying to sell it and set investors up for disaster?”

According to Saurabh Priyadarshi, former chief geologist at Geoxplorers Consulting Services, who has 30 years of experience advising conglomerates in the mining and metals sector, “auctions will always fail if bid in its undiscovered state” due to “insufficient information.”

When the Ministry of Mines announced the reserve, Shafiq Ahmed, district mining officer at Reasi in Jammu, said: Rest of the World He said a handful of private companies had independently tested the samples and were “not satisfied” with the quantity and quality of the lithium. “That’s why companies are stepping back,” he said.

“This is neither feasible nor financially feasible,” Ahmed said. “The government hastily announced”

Lithium was the first was discovered A team of geologists accidentally found themselves in Salal visited The region was searching for bauxite, a source of aluminum, in the 1990s. Decades later, in 2018, as lithium became important in the global transition to clean energy, Indian mining officials returned to the region to explore.

Even if the reserve is truly full of “white gold” (now sometimes called lithium), mining in the village of Salal is fraught with difficulties. Electric mobility expert and S&P rating agency director Puneet Gupta said Jammu and Kashmir is a region full of uncertainties for companies looking to invest in minerals. Rest of the World. “The state suffers from political instability, violence and lack of peace; any company that comes will see all this in the picture,” he said.

Salal is located in the disputed and conflict-ridden Kashmir region of India, close to the Pakistan border. There have been militant attacks in the last two years. condensed In the areas around Salal. A local militant group announced that he would attack Any company that extracts lithium reserves calls mining “colonial exploitation and theft of Jammu and Kashmir’s resources”.

The village is located on the Chenab River, which is part of the water sharing agreement between India and Pakistan. Lithium mining is a resource-intensive process that heavily pollutes water and soil, affecting local residents, agriculture and biodiversity. The region is also very active seismically. “These factors make any industrial intervention in the region a complex and sensitive undertaking,” Priyadarshi said.

Before auctioning the reserve again, the government take into account more discovery. Mining officials say this could take months or years. Thakur, a snack shop worker in Salal, is angry about the delay. He said he felt like his future was in limbo. He said he plans to renovate the store but is currently hesitant to invest in infrastructure that “could be bulldozed the next day.” “We were standing on the gallows; I feel as if the lever could be pulled at any moment.”

Thakur’s uncle Karan Singh, 65, lives with his mother in a well-appointed three-room house located above the mineral deposits. Before the discovery was announced, Singh had never heard of lithium. He later said he spent many nights imagining the family’s reversal of fate.

But now he welcomes the delay. He remembers growing up with clean air and water, amidst the “natural beauty of my village.” Rest of the World. Singh said moving home at his age would be a difficult task and he was glad the lithium remained in the ground so he could stay.