Mines ministry to frame mineral concession rules by end of April

Government intends to invest huge amount of money in new exploration across the country in the coming years

The Ministry of Mines will complete the process of drafting the Mineral Concession Rules (MCR) under the new Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 2015, by the end of April 2015 and circulate it to all the states.

“The MMDR Act, 2015 was gazette on March 27, 2015, and we have begun the process to draft rules and regulations under which the mining sector will be governed. Once the rules are sent to states, they can go ahead with the auction of mineral assets in their respective states, probably by end of May or early June,” Minister of Steel and Mines Narendra Singh Tomar told reporters, here on Friday.

Tomar, who visited steel ministry undertaking KIOCL Limited and reviewed the performance of the company for 2014-15, said the ministry will define the procedure for conducting auction of mineral assets and state governments will have to abide by those procedures. The new MMDR Act, 2015 also provided by reserving mineral assets to public sector companies under Section 17a2(A) and under this section companies like KIOCL will stand to benefit, he said.

“I have urged the chief minister of Karnataka Siddaramaiah to allocate mining lease to KIOCL in the state. The company has been present in the state of Karnataka for many years and the state government should make use of the company’s presence by helping it to secure mines,” Tomar said.

He said the ministry has notified public sector companies like NMDC, KIOCL, RINL, SAIL and MOIL to conduct mineral exploration, which was till now restricted to MECL alone. The government intends to see that at least Rs 250 crore is spent for exploration of new mineral areas in the country. “Till now, in the last 66 years of independence, we have seen exploration of mineral reserves in only one per cent of the mineral bearing areas in the country. We want to change that now and invest huge amount of money to explore more areas,” Tomar added.

KIOCL Chairman and Managing Director Malay Chatterjee said at least Rs 1,000 crore from all the companies put together could be invested in mineral exploration in the coming year. The KIOCL has also set up a separate division — Mining engineering exploration department — with qualified and experienced engineers to carry out exploration, he said and added that the company was free to carry out exploration in any state in the country.