Delta Region of the East Coast of India: a Potential Target for Exploration of Heavy Minerals

India has a coastline of over 7,500 km, with a large Delta-Region behind it along its East Coast and practically no delta along its West Coast Scientists of the Atomic Minerals Directorate (AMD) for Exploration and Research of the Department of Atomic Energy, by their more than 5-decade old reconnoitory surveys and detailed exploration have identified many dune and beach placer Heavy Minerals (HMs ilmenite,rutile, monazite, zircon, garnet, sillimanite, etc ) sand deposits along the East Coast in the States of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. A few big deposits amongst these are bang exploited by some Govt and Private agencies. As these HMs have numerous industrial, including hitech, applications with further requirement to establish their additional exploitable resource-base, its time to explore for concealed deposits in the hiherto unexplored areas. In this backdrop, it is suggested that the Delta-Region of the East Coast could be a target. Within this, strandplain behind the shoreline and prograding deltas of the Rivers like Mahanadi and Godavai, which are characterized by palaeo-strandlines associated with Palaeo-Sand bodies, all within a zone of 30 km inland from the present day shoreline, appear to be potential for such exploration. This is supported by AMD's recent identification of notable concentration (2-64 wt %, average 16 wt %) of HMs in Palaeo-sand ridges in the Paradeep sector of Orissa and of lesser concentration in parts of the Krishna-Godavari delta in Andhra Pradesh. An exploration programme, involving sequentially (a) mapping of the areas of strandplain and prograding deltas within 30 km inland from the present day shortline by High-Resolution satellite imageries and aerial photographs, (b) shallow seismic survey, (c) Low-Flying Aero-Radiometric/magnetic surveys, (d) reconnoitory ground survey and sampling, (e) sub-surface exploration, first by reconnoitory and then by Exploratory-Evaluation drilling and (f) determnation of grade, mode and resource of HMs, is proposed for this purpose.