Iron ore Mining: Conflicting reports by monitoring and Central Empowered Committee

The former Supreme Court judge Justice B Sudarshan Reddy who is heading an oversight authority has told the top court that it is unable to express “firm opinion” on a demand by miners from Karnataka to raise the annual cap of 35 million metric tonnes of iron production in the mines of Ballari, Chitradurga and Tumkuru districts,due to the conflicting reports by monitoring committee and the court-appointed Central Empowered Committee.

Former Justice said that the CEC, industry bodies FIMI South, and KISMA along with the Karnataka government have favoured the removal of district level caps on production. He added that the Union government’s Ministries of Mines and Steel had also approves doing away with the ceiling in order to make the mines of Karnataka at par with the rest of the country.

 A bench by Chief Justice N V Ramana is scheduled to consider the matter on Monday, August 22. A report filed by the oversight authority said, “It is not for the authority to express any opinion whether the monitoring committee has exceeded its brief in joining an issue with the CEC by pleading for continuation of the ceiling limit.”

On May 20, the court ordered the authorities to take and send inputs from stakeholders including the CEC and the monitoring committee on the issue of lifting of ceiling limit of iron ore production in mining leases of three districts of Karnataka.

As per the instructions, every stakeholder was given an opportunity and the  authority found that FIMI South, KISMA and as well as CEC in one voice pleaded that the district level caps on production of iron ore need to be relaxed.

 The writ petitioners NGO Samaj Parivartan Samudaya and the monitoring committee, were not ok with the others and said that it would not be appropriate, at this juncture, to remove the caps, in view of “inter-generational equity” and “sustainable development”.

The monitoring committee, apprised the court that during the current financial year (2022-23), despite the ceiling, about 63.86 MMT of ore (including waste dump of low grade) will be available for sale. The total consumption from all the mines during 2021- 22 was about 3,98,33,602 MT and about 1,19,15,433 MT is still left unsold and available for sale during 2022-23.

The Writ petitioners however said that, “FIMI and its member mining companies, aided for unknown reasons by the CEC, deliberately led the Supreme Court into the present crisis.”