Friday, July 08,
A ministerial panel on mine on Thursday unanimously approved the draft Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation (MMDR) Bill, 2011, which provides for 26 per cent profit sharing by coal miners and 100 per cent royalty sharing for others with project-affected people.
COAL
“The Bill has been unanimously passed. It will now go to the Cabinet within the next 15 days. We will try to table the Bill in the forthcoming monsoon season of Parliament,” Mines Minister Dinsha Patel told reporters emerging from the one-and-a-half-hour long meeting of the Group of Ministers.
He, however, declined to give details of the provisions in the Bill. “Once the proceedings are over, I will give you details,” Patel said. Sources, meanwhile, said the Bill proposes 26 per cent profit sharing by coal companies with the project affected people; while rest of the miners would share 100 per cent royalty.
IRON ORE
Under pressure from miners, a ministerial panel on Thursday watered down the proposed legal amendments and decided to prescribe a 26% profit sharing mechanism only for the coal business . In case of other mines, only the royalty is proposed to be doubled. This effectively means that instead of paying Rs 300 a tonne royalty on iron ore, a miner will now have to pay Rs 600 though he would continue to sell the ore anywhere between Rs 4,500 and Rs 8,000 a tonne. A 26% revenue share would have forced the miner to share Rs 1,100-Rs 2,000 to those displaced in tribal dominated districts.
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