Royalty on minerals to be doubled, half to be used for development in tribal areas

Even as the national food security and land acquisition bills hog the limelight, the UPA government is finalising a key social inclusion legislation which aims to plough back revenue from mining for development of tribal areas. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 7, 2013, 20:21:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Even as the national food security and land acquisition bills hog the limelight, the UPA government is finalising a key social inclusion legislation which aims to plough back revenue from mining for development of tribal areas.

The revamped Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Bill being readied for Cabinet consideration provides for spending half of the royalty a state government gets from mining for development of areas where the mining takes place.

Senior government sources said the royalty for the state government from mining would be doubled with a condition that half of it will have to be used for development of people living around mining areas through the district mineral foundation.

"The provision would provide more money to the state governments for development of tribal areas which are most backward," said a senior plan panel functionary. Most of the mine rich areas are in tribal zones of India considered to be most backward and left wing extremist hit.

The UPA government had decided for more inclusive mineral policy through the bill introduced in Parliament last year. A Parliamentary Standing Committee submitted its recommendations in first week of May and the mines ministry constituted a group to consider the recommendations.

"We expect the bill to be ready for Cabinet consideration by the end of June," an official said.

The proposed law also provides for mandatory sharing of 26% of the profit from mining activity with locals, except in coal. The development activity would be carried out by a foundation to be set up once the bill becomes a law.

Officials said the mines ministry, which is piloting the law, has been asked to fast track the process for seeking Cabinet approval so that the bill can be introduced in the budget session of Parliament.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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