Mines Ministry seeks inputs, suggestions on MMDR Bill 2014

KOLKATA: The mines ministry has appealed to various stakeholders in the mining sector to give their inputs and suggestions to various provisions of the 9-page draft Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation (MMDR) Bill 2014, which has been put up on its website. The government is keen on introducing the Bill in the current Parliament session which ends on December 24 and is hopeful of starting the auctions within three months of the Bill becoming an Act.
"We want to make it publicly acceptable and we would like to get your suggestions by December 10. However, so far we have not received much feedback," Anup Kumar Pujari, union mines secretary said. He was speaking at the inaugural session of IMME and Global Mining Summit 2014. "Once we fix the policy, we will then finalise the auction method," he added. The Bill proposes auction as the only method for allotment of mining leases and for the first time proposes unbundling of mineral resources into bulk (iron ore, bauxite etc) and non bulk minerals.