The Jonnagiri gold mine in Kurnool, which Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu inaugurated on Wednesday (June 24, 2026), is India’s largest private gold mine and, for now, its only operating one. It is expected to produce about 400 kg of gold in 2026-27 and to climb towards a tonne a year.
Spread across 597.82 hectares of its mining lease in Tuggali mandal of Kurnool, the mine is taking in the villages of Jonnagiri, Erragudi and Pagadirai. The developer, Geomysore Services (India), calls it “the first private sector gold mine with an integrated processing facility” in the country in 70 years.
India buys far more gold than it mines. It imported a record $71.98 billion of gold in 2025-26, about 721 tonnes, by Commerce Ministry data, nearly all of what it consumes. Set against that, Jonnagiri’s output, even at a full tonne a year, is but a fraction of a percent.
Why Andhra Pradesh left it to a private firm
For more than a century, India’s gold meant the Kolar Gold Fields (KGF). After it was closed in 2001, primary gold mining stopped, leaving only the State-owned Hutti mine in Karnataka. Reviving a buried deposit is slow, costly and uncertain work.
Geomysore, promoted by the Tamil Nadu-based Thriveni Earthmovers and part-owned by the listed explorer Deccan Gold Mines, held the ground from the 1990s, applied for its mining lease in 2006, and reached production only now, after an investment it puts at about ₹405 crore.
The law made the route possible: since 2015, mineral blocks must be auctioned in the open, and a 2021 amendment lets a private explorer who proves a deposit keep it, mine it and sell the gold freely. Jonnagiri is the first large-scale private mine to come through that door. In India, gold is listed among metallic minerals, specifically as a precious metal.
What Andhra Pradesh gets
According to a businessline report, the State carries none of the risk, yet it earns from every gram of gold. Official estimates put its royalty, set at 4% of the value of the gold, at about ₹57 crore in the first year and around ₹144 crore as output grows.
Under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, the lease-holder must also pay a share of the royalty to the District Mineral Foundation, a fund for the people and areas hit by mining. The share is fixed by the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana at 30% of the royalty for leases granted before 2015 and 10% for those won at auction since, and is meant for needs such as drinking water, health and education in the mining belt.
Workforce: Geomysore puts it at about 300 direct and 300 indirect jobs.
The Cabinet has also proposed renaming Jonnagiri village ‘Swarnagiri’, or Golden Hill, and the launch is folded into Mr. Naidu’s ‘Swarna Andhra 2047’ plan for a larger State economy by the country’s centenary.
On the ground at Jonnagiri
Jonnagiri is an open-pit mine on the Jonnagiri greenstone belt, the same Dharwar rock that holds Kolar and Hutti. The company’s own mining plan, posted on its site, permits it to work the deposit at 0.4 million tonnes a year. The ore is drilled, blasted and crushed, the gold drawn out by gravity and by carbon-in-leach, a cyanide process, and smelted on site into dore, a rough bar later refined into pure metal.
The water comes from the Handri-Neeva Sujala Sravanthi canal through an 18-km pipeline, an irrigation lifeline in a dry stretch of Rayalaseema. On its website, Geomysore lists its work in the villages around the lease, from drinking water to schools and plantations, saying it has drilled 40 bore wells, of which 10 yield water, and supplied drinking water to “approximately 3,000 people every day during the summers” and to two schools.
From KGF to Jonnagiri
Kolar gave up an estimated 800 to 900 tonnes of gold over 120 years and sank 3.2 km, among the deepest in the world, before its ore thinned and the State abandoned it. Deccan Gold Mines’ investor filings put Jonnagiri’s audited resource at about 8.2 million tonnes of ore at 1.49 grams a tonne, close to 12 tonnes of contained gold, and an eight-to-nine-year life in its main pit.
The State has spoken of a far larger upside, up to 42.5 tonnes, but that remains an exploration target, and the ground under Jonnagiri has not yet been made to give it up.
Published – June 24, 2026 02:07 pm IST
