India’s Mines Ministry seeks to combat illegal mining of minor minerals

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – With the Indian Mining Tenement System (MTS) for major minerals nearing completion, the Mines Ministry has started laying the foundation for the eventual addition of minor minerals to the portal in an effort to help mitigate against illegal mining.

The inclusion of minor minerals, currently the exclusive legal and administrative domain of provincial governments, in the MTS is expected to ensure greater scrutiny and monitoring of a sector plagued by illegal mining, a ministry official has said.

The Mines Ministry has convened a meeting of representatives of eight of the largest minor mineral producing provinces for June 16, to discuss the inclusion of minor minerals in the MTS portal, options for the allocation of minor mineral resources for extraction and, most importantly, the rising number of cases of illegal mining.

According to the agenda paper circulated to the eight provincial governments, instances of illegal mining of minor minerals, including sand, are continuing.

The Ministry announced that the first phase of the MTS would be operational by November, and the second and final phase by April 2018.

“It was felt that provincial governments would revisit their rules for minor minerals to adopt a transparent and nondiscriminatory method for granting concessions for minor mineral tenements. But despite simplification of the process, the illegal mining of minor minerals is continuing,” the Ministry noted.

Even though the Mines, Minerals Development and Regulation Act has made auctions mandatory for the allocation of mineral resources, provinces currently use three different models to allocate mineral resources.

The official said that while few provinces had adopted the auction route, there were some that granted extraction concessions exclusively to companies owned and operated by local governments and production was sold at controlled rates.

In a third model, users were allowed to excavate sand free for their use without paying any royalty to the provincial governments.

“There are several issues which have to be considered to ensure sustainable sand mining that conforms to legal, regulatory and environmental norms and such norms need to be put in place,” the official added.