A positive news for Indian EV industries is coming all the way from Jammu & Kashmir. India discovered enormous 5.9 million tonnes of lithium resources in Jammu and Kashmir, in the nation’s north, the mining ministry of India reported on Thursday.  Over 650 km north of the Indian capital of New Delhi, in the Salal-Haimana area of the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir, the Geological Survey of India for the first time discovered lithium inferred resources (G3) of 5.9 million tonnes.

As India focuses on electric mobility for both public and private transportation, particularly in the nation’s major cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, and Chennai, the country’s lithium reserves are crucial.

India’s Ministry of Mines also said that state governments got 51 mineral blocks, which included lithium and gold blocks. Five of the 51 mineral blocks contain gold. Other blocks cover Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, and are related to commodities including potash, molybdenum, and base metals.

India will start 966 mining initiatives in this fiscal year, including 318 projects for mineral exploration and 12 for marine mineral research. The Geological Survey of India has developed 16 projects on fertilizer minerals and 115 projects on strategic and important minerals. “55 programmes on geoinformatics, 140 programmes on fundamental and multidisciplinary geosciences, and 155 programmes for training and institutional capacity building have also been taken up,” according to the Mines ministry.

The Geological Survey of India (GSI) was founded in 1851 to advance British objectives in locating coal reserves for the country’s expanding railway system. Since the country got its independence in 1947, it has been run by the Mining Ministry and serves as the main scientific center for geological explorations.