State rejects 40 mining lease renewal cases

In its crackdown on lessees operating without the necessary statutory clearances, the state steel & mines department has rejected the cases of renewal of mining leases (RML) of 40 lessees.

The lessees whose cases for renewal have been rebuffed by the department include Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys-IMFA, B C Sahu, Basudev Pradhan, K K Das, K K Agrawal, Keonjhar Minerals Ltd, Pravash Chandra Agrawal, B K Mohanty, R C Das, Neelachal Refractories, P R Jain, Pratap Chandra Mohanty, Prabir Ghose, Jyoti Parmanik, D M Minerals and Shah Refractories to name a few.

“We have rejected the RML cases of 40 lessees. They were operating without the necessary statutory clearances and there was no merit in renewing these mining leases,” said a top official of steel & mines department.

He informed that there were nearly 250 applicants for RML of which 51 lessees including six leases of Tata Steel were currently operating under deemed extension.

A special cell has been constituted within the department for disposal of RML applications.

The decision to form the RML cell has been prompted by the huge volume of pending cases and the inordinate delay in disposal of such cases.

The cell is monitoring the disposal and processing of cases by the concerned officers of the department. Besides, the cell is coordinating with the office of the Mines Directorate.

It was decided at a recent meeting that the additional secretaries of the Mineral Concessions (MC-I) section under the steel & mines department shall take up hearing of at least 10-12 cases per month. On the other hand, the additional secretary in charge of MC-II section shall take up hearing of 20 cases per month. The department secretary had earlier instructed that all-out efforts should be made to expedite disposal of pending RML cases in a time-bound manner.