Right after the four years of lifting up the ban on mining due to illegal mining activities in Karnataka, the apex court have now asked the Karnataka government to specify an alternative to e-auction of iron ore in the state.
Karnataka is the 3rd largest iron ore producing state of India and offered a quantity of 28.7 MnT in FY-17 via e-auctions.
The Supreme Court lifted the ban on April 18, 2013 on mining in Ballari, Tumakuru and Chitradurga districts, but had limited the extraction of ore with the cap of 30 MnT.
Many of the miners along with the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI), a mining industry body have requested to do away with an e-auction process for the iron and manganese ores in Karnataka, the process which was directed by the apex court in 2013.
A bench consisting of three-judges having Justice Ranjan Gogoi as president asked advocate Anita Shenoy who represented the state government, to reply to the plea in six weeks, that is made by FIMI to remove iron ore e-auction process.
FIMI’s advocate Gopal Subramanium, argued that the option for e-auction could be, that a long-term agreement to be formed between the producers and buyers as part of the new arrangement. He referred to proposal given by Central Empowered Committee (CEC) in its report on April 28, 2016 regarding the matter concerned.
On the other hand advocate Prashant Bhushan who appeared for Samaj Parivartan Samudaya, an NGO, opposed the suggestion and said that the e-auction was meant to provide the best price and royalty to the state government.
The industry body, however, said even if there is a long-term agreement for purchases, it would continue to be examined by the monitoring committee.
FIMI and the state government have requested the court to increase the cap limit of iron ore mining in Karnataka by at least 10 MnT. For now the court have agreed to think over the plant owner’s request for increasing the iron ore mining cap from 30 to 40 million tonnes per annum. The court have asked the CEC to review the request.
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