Cong govt relied on Rule 24 (a), sub rule 6 to allow mining without lease renewal to continue
Used favourable law to carry out unfavourable practice of deemed renewals
Executive and legislative failure allowed judiciary to go beyond laid down rules
TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Somewhere towards the end of page 33 and into page 34 of the Supreme Court judgment, all hopes for the revival of mining back to its “glory” days was knocked out in this sucker punch of a paragraph.
“If the right of renewal of a mining lease is dependent upon the state government forming an opinion that in the interest of mineral development it is necessary to do so…a provision regarding deemed extension till orders are passed by the state government on the application of renewal cannot apply. We are, therefore, of the opinion that sub-rule (6) of Rule 24A of the MC Rules will apply to a case of first renewal under sub-section (2) of Section 8 of the MMDR Act other than a case covered under sub-rule (9) of Rule 24A of the MC Rules, but will not apply to renewal under sub-section (3) of Section 8 of the MMDR Act”.
This, to the lay person and not a mining expert simply means that if the government has not renewed a mining lease during the time of its second renewal, the lease cannot be deemed renewed indefinitely, till the government passes orders for its renewal.
This interpretation flies completely in the face of the letter of Rule 24 sub rule 6 of the Mineral Concession Rules which underwent a critical change in 1994 when Rule 24 sub rule 6 was changed with the word “first” in renewal was dropped, thereby implying that this rule, permitting deemed leases to continue applies to all renewals and not just first renewals. It is this change that allowed successive governments mainly the Congress government in Goa to merrily use the deemed renewal clause without actually renewing leases. That gave mining companies a chance to operate without complying with strict provisions laid down for proper renewals including impact assessments and carrying capacity. But the bottom line was that it wasn’t illegal. Not in letter.
Ministry of Mines says so: The law was always enabling for governments and mining companies and reiterated in various ways in various places. The Frequently Asked Question section in the Ministry of Mines has this question How does a person renew a mining lease? In the reply, after the details of how a lease can be renewed is the paragraph “If a person applies for renewal of the mining lease in time, he can continue mining even beyond the date of expiry of the subsisting mining lease till the state government passes a decision on his application for renewal”
Minister of Mines says so: As recently as December 13, 2013, the Minister of Mines Dinsha Patel in reply to a Lok Sabha unstarred question from Sudarshan Bhagat on large scale mineral activity taking place without lease renewals said “If an application for renewal of mining lease is not disposed of by the state, before the date of expiry of the lease, the period of that lease shall be deemed to have been extended by a further period till the state government passes an order thereon”
It’s clear therefore that during the arguments the executive and the legislature failed to defend itself on the issue of letter alone. In fact, the second part of this report will detail how the Goa government actually helped the Supreme Court reach a conclusion that deemed renewal amounted to illegal mining.
The irony of this borders on the bizarre. The Supreme Courts own monitoring committee which had toured Karnataka as a part of the apex court’s directives allowed a lease of a very big mining major to get its lease, in the Chitradurga district which expired on October 27 , 2012 to be renewed on May 15, 2013.
The ramifications will not hit just Goa. The Supreme Court forest bench on Monday (April 29) used the Goa order to dispose of a petition in Orissa including leases for captive mines of Tata Steel and the Steel Authority of India Limited. 26 out of 56 working leases of Tata and SAIL are affected to close now.
