India: Odisha cracks down on excess mining, more notices issued

Seven iron ore miners, including Sarda mines and Essel, have been issued with steep penalties for violating their EC limits on a prorata basis. As SteelMint reported recently, Sarda Mines has been asked to pay a differential amount of Rs 2056.4 crore, SteelMint has learned that Essel Mining, Tantra mine of Korp Resources, Gita Rani, BD Patnaik’s Banspani mine, AMTC and National Entreprises have all been issued demand notices on similar grounds. While IDCOL has been show-caused.

The logic behind these notices is that if a miner is allowed 6mt and is left with 4 months of the year, then he may only mine half a million tonnes a month or 2 mn tonnes in four months. This ‘stipulation’ is based on a Supreme Court-appointed Committee’s report in the Common Cause (Odisha mining) matter.

Parallelly, the Centre has moved to clarify that new lessees who have bagged rights through an auction process and are required to extract 80 per cent of their ECs, can meet this target on a quarterly basis and need not be held accountable at the end of every month. The Odisha government had shown-caused miners for the shortfall calculated on a monthly basis, while miners were arguing the MDPA should be considered an annual target like other production-linked permits such as their Environmental Clearance.

SteelMint has learnt that the demand notices will not lead to an immediate stoppage of work; miners have been given 15 days to comply.

It is important to note that this demand, invoking Section 21(5) of the MMDR (and made after 7-8 months in Sarda Mine’s case for example), is being made even as the union Cabinet has approved an amendment that is set to rewrite the very same section of the law. The section defines “illegal mining” which is to be penalized by reclaiming the entire value of the ore. Having in the past decided that a violation any statutory clearance (under environment and forest acts, pollution control act or mining plan) amounted to illegal mining, the Centre now seeks to take a previously held position that such lapses should be seen as “irregular” and not illegal mining.