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Tuesday, Aug 12, 2008
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State Government to come out with new mining policy

Special Correspondent

Chief Minister orders crackdown on all illegal mining activities

BANGALORE: The State Government has decided to come out with a comprehensive mining policy to check illegal mining and overexploitation of the State’s natural resources.

Ordering a crackdown on all illegal mining in the State on Monday, Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, who holds the Mining portfolio, said the Government would bring in the new policy to regulate mining. The new policy would promote mining of iron ore and other mineral resources only for value-added activities. The Government was against indiscriminate and illegal mining that caused loss of rich mineral wealth for meagre royalties, he said.

Mr. Yeddyurappa said the Government had ordered Police, Industry and Forest department officials to crack down on all illegal mining. The Bharatiya Janata Party Government had not granted new mining licences after it came to power. It had also not renewed the mining licences, he said.

Admitting that checking mining on revenue (patta) land was a problem as small farmers were lured by the mining lobby, the Chief Minister said the Government would take up the case of mining on revenue land with the Union Government and seek permission for entrusting mining to State-owned Mysore Minerals Ltd.

Mr. Yeddyurappa, who held a meeting with officials of the Revenue, Transport, Home and Forest departments in the backdrop of the Karnataka High Court judgment quashing 36 mining licences sanctioned by the S.M. Krishna Government in forest areas of five districts in 2003, asked the officials to take tough steps to curb all types of illegal mining and transportation across the State.

The Congress Government issued licences for mining in 36 blocks covering 5,347 hectares in forest areas.

Previous governments had issued 538 leases for mining iron ore, manganese, limestone, copper and other minerals. As many as 138 leases pertained to iron ore mining alone on 24,810 hectares, including 15,647 hectares in forest areas.

Though Karnataka exports iron ore worth Rs. 8,000 crore a year, the State has been receiving royalty of only Rs. 80 crore. Even if the royalty was fixed at a minimum of 10 per cent, the State would get revenue of at least Rs. 800 crore annually, the Chief Minister said.

Stating that Rs. 55 lakh had been released to the Karnataka Remote Sensing Application Centre to conduct a satellite survey of the entire mining area in the State, he said, if required, more funds would be released for conducting satellite surveys.

The previous government had recommended to the Centre for granting approval for mining in 24 of the total 36 blocks in different parts of the State, involving an extent of 5,347 hectares of land. The Centre had cleared two proposals involving 5,093 hectares.

Twelve proposals were pending with the Centre. The BJP government would not recommend the proposals to the Centre, he said.

To check illegal transportation of iron ore and other minerals, the Government decided to establish mobile squads and strengthen the existing 28 check-posts. Generally, miners would get permits for mining in some areas but they carried out mining in forest areas also, Mr. Yeddyurappa said.

As many as 150 trucks illegally transporting about 2 lakh tonnes of iron ore worth Rs. 30 crore had been seized during the last couple of days in Sandur of Bellary district and criminal cases had been registered. Another 1,200 tonnes of iron ore illegally extracted in Hospet had also been seized. Police had seized 46 trucks illegally transporting iron ore near Mangalore last week, he said.

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