The Union mines ministry is prepared to auction the mineral assets lapsing by March 31, 2020.
“Those mines whose validity ends by March 2020 will be made auction ready within the specified timeframe. Our ministry is fully equipped to launch those mines for auctions”, Union minister for mines and Parliamentary affairs Narendra Singh Tomar said here on the sidelines of INCAL 2019, a global meet on aluminium.
A total of 288 mineral blocks are lapsing by March 31, 2020. Of this, 59 are working mines. The lease validity of these mines in question was extended till that period after an amendment was made to the Mines and Minerals- Development & Regulation Act. Goa has the most number of mines (160) headed for expiry. Next to Goa are Karnataka and Odisha with 45 and 31 mining leases respectively.
Mineral-bearing states that dragged their feet on auctions of the lapsing blocks have been getting repeated reminders from the Union ministry of mines to prepare the roadmap for a transition. These states are scrambling to prepare blocks lapsing by March 31, 2020 for auctions. The urgency to ready the mineral blocks for auction stems from the recent notification of the Draft Mineral Concession and Development- MCDR (Amendment) Rules, 2018 by the Government of India.
Asked about new blocks being prepared for online auctions, the minister replied there are 100 such auction ready blocks.
He went on to say that to this date, 53 mine blocks have been successfully auctioned, generating Rs 143,000 crore of additional revenue for the host states. The extra revenue has been made possible only due to auctions, he asserted.
The minister said the government’s thrust was on exploration and to ramp up mineral exploratory activity, two central sector agencies- Geological Survey of India (GSI) and Mineral Exploration Corporation of India (MECL) are assigned the onerous job.
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