Business Standard reported that the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has rapped the Karnataka government for its failure to initiate any time-bound action plan to monitor the implementation of the Karnataka Mineral Policy 2008.
CAG in its latest report, Controls and Systems for Sustainable Mining in Karnataka said that “Even after a lapse of three years of formation of the committee under the chairmanship of secretary, commerce and industries department, the government of Karnataka has not formulated any time-bound action plan to monitor the implementation of the KMP so that the desired objectives of the policy are achieved in a time-bound manner.”
The state government announced its mineral policy in 2008 with the objective to promote transparency in granting mining concessions and maximize value addition to the minerals extracted within the state by encouraging maximum investments in downstream industries. It was aimed to promote indigenous utilization of iron ore fines and beneficiation of low-grade ores, promote scientific mining and good environmental management and also formulate rules to regulate mineral trade.
According to the CAG report, the state government constituted a state level coordination cum empowered committee under the chairmanship of the chief secretary to speed up allocation of mineral concessions in respect of raw materials for the steel sector. The functions of the committee included reviewing the implementation of the KMP 2008, building up of a computerized database, streamlining and simplification of grant of mineral concessions and to review action taken by different departments to check illegal mining.
The CAG report said that “Though 5 meetings were held till January 2012, we noticed that action plans were not drawn up for speedy allocation of the mining leases to the steel sector and no efforts for implementation of KMP were found on record.”
The CAG added that the state government did not grant any captive mining leases to integrated steel plants despite constituting a high level committee in May 2007 headed by the chief secretary to grant such mining leases.
It said that “The department of mines and geology accepted in September 2012 that no leases were sanctioned to the integrated steel plants after 2007 despite receiving thousands of applications from companies willing to establish steel plants in the state. The government of Karnataka had recommended to the government of India iron ore leases to 11 applications who had established steel plants in the state.”
The CAG added the Karnataka government did not earmark 15 per cent of the annual royalties collected towards the Mineral Development Fund (MDF) for building infrastructure in mining areas. No new railway lines were commissioned, it said.
The further added that “The government may consider creation of a MDF to undertake the task of building infrastructure in mining areas and make efforts to get the railway lines commissioned to augment the transport facilities in mining areas.”
