Mines ministry comes sup with advisory on mining leases

For the purpose, ministry asks MoEFCC to expedite environment clearances for pending mining leases in four states

The ministry of mines has suggested to the ministry of environment, forest a climate change (MOEFCC) to expedite grant of environmental clearances to valid mining leases in the state of Goa without waiting for the response of the state in this matter.

According to officials close to the development, this decision has been taken to expedite resumption of mining in Goa for which the MOEFCC has asked the government of Goa to provide a list of mines with valid mining lease for grant of environmental clearance.

While earlier it used to a matter of course decisions as and when mining leases come up for clearances, now there is a limit to the capacity of mining put by the Supreme Court.

 The Supreme Court has restricted the capacity of mining in the state to a production cap of 20 million metric tonne per annum. Officials said in view of this cap which is primarily imposed to protect environment degradation through mining activity, environment clearance has to be given keeping this criterion in mind as well.

On the other hand, mines ministry s of the view that maintaining this cap is a responsibility of the state and thus whatever valid leases are pending with the MOEFCC, it should grant the clearance. The states will then only allow those lessees to mine which have valid clearances on record within the limit imposed by the Supreme Court.

Similarly in order to expedite mining resumption in Odisha, MoEFCC has directed the Council of Scientific and Industrial research to conduct study on the carrying capacity of the mining sector in the state. This follows the Shah enquiry commission recommendation that production limit granted as per the environment clearances for iron ore mines in the state are much more than the carrying capacity in Odisha. 

In the state of Karnataka, the MOEFCC has decided to expedite the environmental clearances (EC) of only category a mines irrespective of the fact that there are clearances pending for category B and category C mines which are facing prohibition from resumption of mining.

However the EC will be granted to category A mines which have approved the rehabilitation and reclamation plan (R&R). The Supreme Court has partially eased a year long suspension which it had imposed on metals and mining companies in the state on environmental related concerns but only for category A mines.

Explaining this, officials said, mines operating under category 'A' have not been found indulging in any illegal activity. However, there is minimal illegality found in a few cases. There are about 18 companies falling under this category which have been allowed to restart mining on the condition that they implement proper rehabilitation and reclamation (R&R) plan.

On the whole, The MoEFCC has made EC and FC clearance mechanism online in respect of submission and processing of proposals and four states have been asked to provide the pendency list of mining proposal for speedy clearances. These states are Goa, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Odisha.