KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - The Indian government continues to be dogged by policy and administrative ambiguities governing minor mineral mining under the purview of the provincial governments.

Even as the Mines Ministry attempts to get the mining of major minerals back on track through a reformed federal legislative environment and mandatory auction route for the allocation of resources, the minor mineral sector governed by provincial level legislation continues to be plagued by differing rules, lack of transparency and discriminatory process of awarding leases.

In a circular issued to all provincial governments, the Mines Ministry last year said, “the central government directs that the state governments should take necessary steps to ensure that the complete process relating to grant of mineral concessions of minor miners is made fair, transparent and non-discriminatory”.

“It is therefore requested that your government should review mechanisms and procedure relating to grant of concessions and leases of minor minerals expeditiously and take steps to ensure compliance of principles laid down by the Supreme Court,” the circular said.

However, this circular has clearly had no impact on provincial governments in changing their respective geographies. This was evident at a review meeting on minor minerals, last week, held by the Mines Ministry with representatives of provincial governments. 

At the meeting the Secretary to the Ministry expressed concern over provincial governments not framing their respective minor mineral policies, nor making auction mandatory for the award of mining concessions as the federal government had done in case of major minerals.

According to documents of the review meeting accessed from the Mines Ministry, the government of the southern province of Kerala maintained that though it had famed a minor mineral policy, government land bearing minor minerals was so limited that auction was not possible.

The northern hilly province of Uttarakhand maintained that while it had initially adopted the tendering process of award of mining concessions, bidders had put in such exorbitant bids to secure awards that subsequently they were unable to operationalize their concessions. This had prompted the local government to award concessions through a ‘lottery’ system.

In the case of Uttar Pradesh, the government had put up 900 leases for auction, but the process was legally challenged and cases were presently pending in courts.

The Himachal Pradesh government said that the auction route had been adopted last year but the response was so poor that the tender had to be cancelled.

However, a Ministry official conceded that mining of minor minerals at provincial level was largely controlled by small, unorganised small-time miners and was plagued with vested interests that opposed the auction process, hamstringing and provincial governments from standing up to such powerful vested bodies.

The Mines Ministry had categorized 24 minerals as ‘minor’ such as gravel, ordinary clay and limestone used for lime burning. Last year the Ministry shifted 31 more minerals, such as china, clay and chalk, from list of ‘major minerals’ to the minor category.