By Vikas Dhoot, ET Bureau | 4 Dec, 2014,
NEW DELHI: India's mining sector is on the verge of shutting down in two months, industry bodies warned the government, citing an onerous forest clearance requirement imposed by the former UPA government's controversial environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan that would force all mines to cease operations.
"By February 2015, everything would come to a standstill," president of the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries H Noor Ahmed told ET, hoping for urgent action from the government to rescue the already troubled sector, which has contracted in the past three years.
All mines with partial forest clearances should get fresh clearances for their entire lease areas by the end of January 2015 if they want to continue operations, the environment ministry's forest wing had said in a directive issued with the approval of then minister Natarajan on February 1, 2013.
With the deadline weeks away, both FIMI and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have redflagged the issue afresh with the ministries of mines and environment and forests and are planning to approach the Prime Minister's Office if the green ministry doesn't act soon.
Fearing a serious impact on mining and consequently, manufacturing, industry has suggested that the government should either withdraw the diktat or at the very least, extend the January 2015 deadline.
The problem, according to industry is that almost all mines in the country have been working with partial forest clearances and getting a forest clearance takes five to seven years, making it impossible to meet the two-year deadline.
Moreover, they argue that diverting the entire forest area in a mining belt at one go, instead of a phased manner, is not a prudent approach to conserving green cover. They have also pointed out that getting non-forest land for compensatory afforestation is a challenge in mineral-rich states.
The impasse on forest clearances for mines was incidentally part of a laundry list of green clearance headaches faced by investors, shared by industry with the PMO in the early days of the Modi government. Separate representations made to the environment, forest and climate change minister Prakash Javadekar, including a detailed missive sent by CII this August, have elicited no action.
"State governments have already started truncating the leases based on the area for which forest clearance has not been obtained... We request you to kindly take a considerate view of this issue being faced by mining industry as many of the mines are now on the verge of being closed," CII said in a November 12 letter to environment secretary Ashok Lavasa reviewed by ET.
FIMI members also met Lavasa on the imbroglio in late November. "We have requested him to amend the rules. I hope that some action is taken soon," said Ahmed.
Eighty percent of India's mineral riches are in tribal-dominated regions, with a very dense forest cover. About 70% of districts with large mineral deposits are classified as backward and over half of those are in areas affected by Maoist insurgency. Just 11 states, including Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha and Jharkhand account for nearly 94% of India's total operating mines.
"The forest area approved should not be lesser than the total forest area included in the mining lease approved under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act of 1957. Both necessarily have to be the same," according to the environment ministry diktat.
"Mining in such leases will be allowed only if the user agency either obtains approval for the entire forest land located within the mining lease or surrenders such forest land for which approval has not been obtained and execute a revised mining lease for the reduced lease area," it stated.
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