Four miners accused in the illegal mining case including Jindal Steel and Power Limited, Sarda Mines Private Limited, Rungta Group of Companies and Essel Mining and Industries Limited, who had challenged the Central Empowered Committee Report tabled before the Hon’ble Supreme Court, will be heard by the SC today.
The report highlighting various offences committed by the miners with regard to environment clearance norms and excessive mining had been submitted to the SC in 2014 and formed the basis for severe action taken by the SC.
A hearing in the case was scheduled to be held on Tuesday but was postponed for the next day. The Supreme Court had also decided to examine in detail if there are any violation of certain rules of MMDR Act, etc committed by these four miners in particular apart from the other guilty parties.
Similarly, eight other miners including R.P. Sao, Indrani Patnaik, M/s KJS Ahluwalia, M/s Aryan Mining and Trading Corpn Ltd, M/s Mideast Integrated Steel Ltd. Kavita Agrawal, Mala Roy and Ors and M/s Sharda Mines (p) Ltd, have filed an application on question of appointing a committee in respect of the applicability of Rule 37 of the Mineral Concession Rule, 1960.
It may be recalled here that SC while imposing a massive 100% penalty on miners on August 2, 2017 found guilty of illegal Iron and Manganese ore mining in Odisha for a number of offences.
What is Rule 37 of MCR
The particular rule in essence, bars any lessee from subletting, mortgaging, assigning, give away control in any way to another party without the consent of State Government and in certain cases consent of the Central Government as well.
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