Lower penalties for smaller miners soon

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : In yet another reform measure, the Centre plans to ease penalties in mineral concessions for small and medium miners for a range of offences. The mines ministry has started consultations on amendments to the Mineral Conservation and Development (Amendment) Rules, 2021 and the Minerals (Other than Atomic and Hydro Carbons Energy Minerals) Concession (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2021.

These propose to further rationalize the penalties for small and medium miners in leased areas of up to 25 hectares with an annual capacity of up to 200,000 tonnes, two people aware of the development said. The proposal is to cut various penalties for MSME miners by more than half and provide ease of operation for these small players who hold the key to scaling up mineral production in the country.

“The mines ministry proposes to notify the changes as part of its ease of doing initiative. The reform plan is in continuation of the measure taken by the government earlier where a lot of restricted areas including mineral exploration and critical mineral mining has been opened up for the private sector," said one of the two persons quoted above.

Queries mailed to the ministry of mines remained unanswered at the press time. As per the changes proposed by the ministry, non-submission or incomplete/wrong/false information in monthly returns will attract a lower penalty of ₹5000 per day after due date of submission of returns for small miners.

But other miners will have to pay a penalty of ₹10,000 per day. Contravention of rules pertaining to operations, prospecting, installation of plant and machinery, forging alliances or mine closure plan, beneficiation studies would attract a fine of up to ₹1 lakh for small miners, as compared to the