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India mulls risky tweaking of laws defining illegal mining

28th March 2018

By: Ajoy K Das

Creamer Media Correspondent

     

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KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – In view of a spate of court-imposed penalties for illegal mining, the Indian government is working on tweaking the definition of ‘illegal mining’ risking a political and legal minefield.

While no official details on the possible changes in definition of illegal mining have been announced, government sources indicate that the Mines, Minerals Development and Regulation Act could be amended with retrospective effect, so that violations of pollution and environmental laws within the mining lease hold area are not held as ‘illegal mining’, which would have forced miners to pay a penalty equivalent to 100% of the value of their production from such a mine.

Sources say that the government is hopeful of passing the amendments to the Act in the current session of Parliament.

Some within the mining industry and government, however, have expressed reservations about the amendment on the grounds that Indian national elections are scheduled for 2019 and amending the legislation is seen as a political risk, as the government will be perceived as favouring big mining companies and offering legal circumvention to the spate of court rulings against private and government mining companies that sought to hold them liable for illegal mining.

Violations of pollution and environmental laws outside mining leasehold areas too have been regarded as illegal mining in various Supreme Court rulings.

For example, following a Supreme Court verdict on illegal mining in the eastern province of Odisha and the imposition of penalties, the local government last year collected $1.8-billion in penalties with 50 of the 131 miners held guilty for violations by the court yet to pay up.

Even government miners, like Mahanadi Coalfields, a subsidiary of Coal India Limited, has been issued a penalty notice for payment of $1.27-billion based on an illegal mining verdict.

The government is expected to rationalise that pollution and environmental laws violated within a mining leasehold area need to be penalised as per forest and anti-pollution laws, and penalties could not be levied on minerals extracted from within the leasehold areas.

However, officials acknowledge that the “legally sticky issue” will be that an amendment with retrospective effect will open up a Pandora’s Box of fresh legal issues over penalties for illegal mining already paid by miners to respective local governments and the legal status of those miners which have not made the payment and were forced to close down their mining operations.

 

Edited by Mariaan Webb
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

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