About the Conference

Critical and strategic minerals are the backbone of modern technologies—from renewable energy systems to defence, electronics, and electric vehicles. As the world transitions toward green energy, India is emerging as a key player in securing and processing these vital resources and is poised to become a global hub for critical and strategic mineral supply chains—balancing economic growth, strategic security, and sustainability.

The conference aims to bring together key stakeholders from government, industry, academia, and research to deliberate on the strategic development of critical and strategic minerals in India and catalyse India’s transition to a green and technologically advanced future by unlocking the potential of critical and strategic minerals . It seeks to:

• Assess India’s resource potential for critical and strategic minerals essential for clean energy, defence, and high-tech sectors.
• Promote sustainable mining and processing practices to reduce environmental impact and enhance resource efficiency.
• Strengthen domestic capabilities in exploration, extraction, processing, and value addition to reduce import dependence.
• Encourage investment and innovation in mineral technologies, including recycling and substitution.
• Support India’s clean energy and digital ambitions through the development of a robust and self-reliant critical minerals value chain.
• Facilitate cross-sector collaboration among policymakers, industry leaders, scientists, and investors to accelerate innovation and resource development.
• Highlight the strategic importance of critical minerals in powering renewable energy, electric mobility, advanced manufacturing, and national security.
• Promote sustainable and responsible practices in exploration, mining, and processing, aligned with global environmental and social standards.
• Enable policy and investment frameworks that drive domestic production, reduce import dependency, and position India as a global hub for critical mineral technologies.

Based on data available, minerals containing the following elements are considered critical and strategic for our country. They are rare earths, platinum group metals, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite , indium, lithium, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, platinum group metals, rare earths, selenium, silver, tantalum, tellurium, titanium, tungsten, uranium and vanadium.

In the conference , available resources, mining, extraction, separation, characterization , optimum utilization, green technologies and emerging applications of the above mentioned critical and strategic minerals will be discussed. Attempts will also be made to analyse the status of these critical/ strategic materials in the Indian context and to study their availability, requirement and utilization. Efforts will be also made to identify the deficiencies and discover the dependence on other countries and for understanding the possible requirements of few major strategic sectors of technologies in respect of critical/strategic materials. This conference, is designed to bring together leading experts from universities, industry, R & D laboratories and government agencies, thus providing a unique opportunity for communication and collaboration essential to propel a multi-disciplinary dialogue on innovative and sustainable solutions in the field of critical minerals and will feature plenary, keynote and invited talks, thematically focused technical sessions and poster presentations enabling the delegates to network and exchange ideas with their professional peers and acclaimed experts.