Steelmakers located outside Odisha had filed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court against Odisha government’s decision of reserving 50% of Iron ore for the state based industries, which was also called valid by Odisha High Court. Hearing for this petition is expected to take place on 01 Sep, 2014.
Raipur Power & Steel (Chhattisgarh) and Mark Steels (West Bengal) with SLP numbered SC 21915/2014 and SC 21818/2014 respectively are likely to be heard on 01 Sep, 2014, said sources closed to this matter.
What is SLP?
Special leave petition (SLP) means that you take special permission to be heard in appeal against any High Court/tribunal verdict.
Usually any issue decided by the state High Court is considered as final, but if there exist any constitutional issue or legal issue which can only be clarified by the Supreme Court of India then, this leave is granted by the Supreme Court and is heard as a civil or criminal appeal as the case may be.
What is 50:50 Rule in Odisha?
On 5 Dec, 2012, the Odisha Steel & Mines department had issued notification directing all miners to reserve 50% of their monthly Iron ore output for state based industries after captive consumption citing mineral development and other rules contained in the MCR as well as raw material need for local steel companies as the cause for such action.
Many miners had moved to Odisha High Court challenging the legal validity of the notification; terming the restriction of mineral sales a breach of the Constitution.
Hearing on writ petitions filed by AOSF (All Odisha Steel Federation) and FIMI (Federation of Indian Minerals and Industries), the High Court said the government has the right of pre-emption on minerals as mentioned in the section 27 of MCR and hence the notification was legally valid.
Further, High court asked the state government to form a mechanism, which will define equal supply to state based industries at a fair price.
For Gazetted Notification by the state government click below:
http://www.steelmint.com/fileForMail/Steel_&_Mines_Notification_no._1029.pdf
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