India's push to secure the critical minerals that will power its electric-vehicle revolution and renewable-energy grid has landed Union Coal and Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday, 24 October 2026 — where he was received on arrival by Dr. S. Janakiraman, India's Consul General in Sydney.

Reddy confirmed a packed five-day programme that centres on the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) 2026, one of the world's premier gatherings of mining executives, investors, and policymakers. Beyond the conference floor, he will engage with global industry leaders on mining cooperation and critical minerals — and will also meet members of the Indian diaspora in Australia.

Why IMARC and why now

IMARC is not a networking junket — it is where deals get seeded and supply chains get rewired. For India, the timing is pointed: the country is racing to lock in long-term access to lithium, cobalt, and rare earths, the raw materials without which its EV and clean-energy ambitions cannot scale. Australia holds some of the world's largest deposits of precisely those minerals, and its stable regulatory environment makes it a preferred partner over more volatile sources.

The institutional groundwork is already in place. Khanij Bidesh India Ltd (KABIL), set up by the Government of India in 2019 specifically to acquire overseas mineral assets, has identified Australia as a priority destination. The two countries elevated their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2020, with resources and critical minerals explicitly named as pillars of that deeper relationship.

Ministerial resource diplomacy as a pattern

Reddy's Sydney visit is not an isolated event — it is part of a deliberate, recurring pattern of high-level Indian resource diplomacy. Ministerial attendance at IMARC has become a signal in itself: it tells global mining capital that India is a serious buyer and a serious policy partner, not merely a spectator at the table.

The India-Australia alignment also sits within the broader Indo-Pacific strategic framework, including Quad cooperation, where supply-chain resilience for critical minerals has become a shared priority among like-minded democracies. Every bilateral conversation at an event like IMARC thus carries weight beyond the deal memo — it is also geometry.

Diaspora engagement alongside the resource agenda

Reddy's planned interaction with the Indian community in Australia adds a people-to-people dimension to what is otherwise a hard-nosed economic mission. Australia hosts one of the fastest-growing Indian diaspora communities in the world, and ministerial outreach during official visits has become standard practice for the current government.

Watch for any MoUs, joint statements, or project-level announcements that emerge from the IMARC meetings — those will be the real measure of whether five days in Sydney translate into minerals on Indian soil.