Shillong, Mar 16: Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma on Wednesday informed the Assembly that the Centre has granted prospecting license for coal to 17 applicants, all of whom are at the exploration stage for generating geological report before obtaining mining leases, even as he was hopeful that the scientific coal mining would start within this year.
“I cannot give assurance in the House, but we do expect in the best case scenario that within this year, anything between six to eight months time, few of them will start getting approval for the mining plan and that they should be able to start the mining activities very soon,” Sangma said while replying to a query raised by Nongpoh legislator Mayralborn Syiem.
Stating that it will be a process which will start slow as it is happening for the first time, Sangma said, “Therefore, it will be a learning for everyone not only for the land owners, the miners but also for the government agencies.”
“While we do that, we may face a bit of delay in the first few cases but as we move forward and we are able to streamline the process, people start getting used to it, I hope that we will see more applications coming in and more scientific mining and that is where we will see more of the revenue may also grow up exponentially and we may reach the royalty and non-tax revenue of the government at the same level where it used to be before we had the ban on coal mining in the state. (Therefore), we expect that we will see some activities in this calendar year,” he said.
The chief minister also informed that multiple awareness programmes for miners were held in the different coal-rich districts of the state.
“We are providing support hand holding in every step and we will continue to give training and based on that we are seeing the number of applications,” he said.
Nongthymmai legislator Charles Pyngrope wanted to know if the government will consider increasing the price of the challan for increasing the government’s own tax revenue since the challan, which is at Rs 13,000 – Rs 14,000, is being sold at a very high rate in the market.
To this, the chief minister said, “I am not aware of the point but of course I have noted the concern but revenue is on the basis of per metric ton from the mining side, whereas production goes up the revenue per metric ton will also go up.”
He further gave a gist informing the House in terms of royalty or revenue collected by the government that there are four parts to it: royalty is Rs 675 per Metric Tonne (MT), Cess Rs 300 per MT, District Mineral Fund which is 10% of the royalty and there is a National Mineral Exploration Trust which is 2% of the royalty.
Earlier, Sangma said in order to raise state’s own tax revenue through scientific coal mining, state government after the Supreme Court’s order and judgement dated July 3, 2019 allowing coal mining in the state in compliance of MMDR Act, 1957 and chapter-V of Mineral Concession Rules, 1960 has notified Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for grant of prospecting license/or mining lease for sustainable and scientific coal mining in the state dated on March 5, 2021 along with an office memorandum for applying to the Director of Mineral Resources to undertake prospecting operating for coal under the provisions of second proviso to sub-section (1) of section 4 of the MMDR, Act, 1957.
He also explained about the basic procedure for granting geological report before obtaining Mining lease.
Procedure for granting Geological Report
(I) Prospecting part, this requires an SOP and for this the Govt of Meghalaya has come out and based on SOP which came out March 5, 2021, the state government also came up with Office memorandum on March 25, 2021 and in this details have been given how the application is done.
– Minimum area required is 100 hectares that the land owner has to have to apply for scientific mining.
– Non-forest certificate has to be obtained from Govt of Meghalaya – Forest Department, the applicant has to get the land documents, map, different applications and forms, then submit along with a fee of Rs 5000 to the Secretary of Mining, Govt of Meghalaya.
(II) Once the applicant submits the application, the state government verifies all the aspects and then forwards it to Ministry of Coal, Government of India. They then approve the license and communicate back to state govt, which then allows the individual or landowners to carry-out the geological exploration.
Once the exploration is done this entire Geological report is prepared and once again they apply for mining lease through state govt to the Ministry of Coal, Government of India. After the Ministry goes through the report they will approve the lease which is then forwarded to state government who then communicate it to the applicant.
(III) The applicant then prepares a mining plan and submits to the state government, who then sends this plan to Ministry of Coal. It is then sent to Central Mines Planning Development Institute (CMPDI) in Dhanbad which then access the plan that is submitted by these individuals and accordingly approves them. It again goes back to Ministry of Coal, Government of India and communicated back to Meghalaya govt and then the order is issued.
The chief minister informed that if land is less than 150 hectares the state govt gives forest clearance and environment clearance and if it is above 150 hectares Government of India has to give the clearance.
Once the applicant receives Consent to Establish (CTE) and Consent to Operate (CTO) then mining can start and the owner has to get a notification and inform about starting of mining activities to the Directorate General of Mining Safety, whose nodal officer is available in Guwahati.
