Answering the question of Bihar BJP State President, Sanjay Jaiswal in Lok Sabha, the Union Mining Minister, Shri Pralhad Joshi said, Bihar has the largest Goldmine in India. The state has 44 percent of the country’s total gold reserve which is hidden under the land of Karmatia village of Sono block in Jamui district.
How people came to know about the Gold?
39 years ago, the local people of the village first found the gold particles in the soil.
They sell them to the local goldsmiths at throwaway prices.
Later when the district administration knows, they declared Karmatia as a safe area and prohibited unauthorized mining.
The district administration also informed the Government of India about the same.
The Government of India then take immediate action and sent the soil samples of Karmatia village to the laboratory for testing.
Once the testing was complete, the test report confirmed the founding of gold particles in the soil.
That’s the first time, it was officially confirmed the existence of gold particles in the soil of Karmatia village.
The Government of India then tests the amount of gold found per ton of soil.
In that test, officials found, for every ton of soil, only one and a half grams of gold is excavated.
However, as per government standard (of that time), if 2 grams of gold is found in a ton of soil then only the government starts the excavation process.
Now, after these many years, as the price of gold is very high, people are asking the government to revise the stand of gold excavation from the soil. People are asking, with the advancement of technology, doesn’t the government have any method of extracting the gold particles at an affordable rate. As if the government became successful in this initiative, it could solve the problems of Naxals in that area as well as also contributes to generating some employment.