The ministry of mining and the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF) have received over 20,000 cases of illegal mining during the last two months. These complaints have been received at the state and national level, many of them having been filed at groups of villagers, NGOs and rival mining groups complaining against business
rivals who are mining much larger tracts than they were originally allotted. Most of these complaints have been made in the states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand.
But states like Haryana and Rajasthan are also affected by this epidemic. In Haryana, despite high court strictures, illegal mining of the Aravali hills continues unabated, Admitting this trend, Haryana state minister, Kiran Choudhury said, “I recently called a meeting of the Haryana Pollution Control Board insisting that they submit videographed reports to me so that I can keep track of what was happening on the ground.”
The minister for environment & forests, Jairam Ramesh, is equally candid pointing that although a great deal of mining was being carried out on unalloted forest land, “we do not have a regulatory system that is effective enough to stop this illegal mining.”
The minister of mines, B.K. Handique, also admits that once the mining leases are allotted, “the Center had little stake or knowledge about what was happening on the ground.” He recently met the finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to suggest a “windfall tax” to stop this “profiteering”.
The extent of illegal mining can be gauged from the fact that no less a person than Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa admitted that over three crore tons of iron ore worth Rs 12,000 crore was illegally shifted out of his state. “In 2009-10 alone 71 lakh tons of iron ore was illegally shipped out of Karnataka,” he had recently pointed out.
But senior officials in the ministry of mining point out that it is impossible to give a figure as to just how much this illegal mining is costing the exchequer. “It is running into thousands of crores but these are all estimations,” said a senior bureaucrat.
Trying to curb this, law minister Veerappa Moily is keen to set up a Mineral Regulatory Authority which will have the powers to regulate mining. The body will grant mining leases and file cases against violators as a deterrent against illegal mining of minerals. Mr Moily is not willing to give a time frame about when such a bill will be introduced.