New delhi, Sept 30: The Union Cabinet is set to approve a new law that will provide more rights to tribals in commencement and end of mining activity besides providing Rs 10,000 crore annually to 60 tribal-dominated districts, The Times of India reported.
The bill for the new mining law and the repeal of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 is on the agenda for the Cabinet meeting.The bill, expected to be introduced in the next session of Parliament, proposes that coal companies set aside 25 per cent of their post-tax profits into a fund.In addition, an amount equal to the royalty for iron ore, bauxite and limestone will also flow into the fund.
The corpus is proposed to be spent across 60 tribal-dominated districts in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, with each district getting Rs 180 crore on an average every year. Of the 60, 24 districts are badly hit by Naxal violence, officials said.
The proposal in the draft bill going to the Cabinet is, however, a dilution from the original plan which envisaged a 25 per cent levy on all mining activity - and not just coal.
But the plan was dropped by a group of ministers headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee after intense lobbying by private companies and backing from the Planning Commission.
In its revised form, the bill will affect Coal India,a public sector company, the most as it is responsible for coal mining in most parts of the country and will now have to part with a large chunk of its profit.The move has already sent shockwaves in the investor community as Coal India has emerged as one of the most valuable companies in the country.
Apart from the fund, the bill has also proposed that any mining right can only be granted by the government after consulting the local community. Ditto for putting an end to mining activity.
The move is expected to help ease the resistance that companies such as Vedanta have faced in Orissa and the local community had raised concerns in the Niyamgiri hills where Vedanta wanted to dig for bauxite.Once the law is approved, district-level mining foundations are proposed to be set up.
The mechanism for fixing the royalty for minerals is also proposed to be changed in the new dispensation as the government intends to set up another regulatory agency - National Mining Regulatory Development Authority - for the purpose.
"The 1957 law was only about scientific mining. But now we are planning to go beyond that and expand the scope of the law to sustainable mining," said a senior government official on the new legislation that has been in the pipeline for a while now.
