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UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 6

The concept being tested: Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 - critical minerals auctions; Minerals Security Partnership.

Consider the following statements: I. India has joined the Minerals Security Partnership as a member. II. India is a resource-rich country in all the 30 critical minerals that it has identified. III. The Parliament in 2023 has amended the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 empowering the Central Government to exclusively auction mining lease and composite license for certain critical minerals. Which of the statements given above are correct?

Options

  1. AI and II only
  2. BII and III only
  3. CI and III onlyCorrect answer
  4. DI, II and III

The answer: I and III only

India formally joined the Minerals Security Partnership as a partner country in June 2023, a US-led alliance meant to secure supply chains for critical minerals, which settles statement I. The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2023 gave the Central Government exclusive power to auction the mining lease and composite license for a list of critical and strategic minerals placed in a new Part D of the First Schedule, covering minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements, which settles statement III. Statement II fails on the word all: the Ministry of Mines identified 30 critical minerals in 2023 precisely because India is import-dependent for many of them, not resource-rich in every one, which is why the state-run Khanij Bidesh India Ltd was set up to acquire mineral assets overseas.

What UPSC was testing

The trap is the word all in statement II; UPSC routinely uses absolute qualifiers to flip an otherwise plausible statement, since the 30-mineral list was compiled to flag import dependence, not domestic abundance.

How often this comes up

This concept has appeared 4 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025.

The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.