More licences for scientific coal mining on cards: CM

SHILLONG, March 16: Five persons were recently granted prospective licences for scientific mining of coal in the state and Chief Minister, Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday disclosed that more people would get the licences in the next six to eight months.
Reacting to a query from Nongpoh MLA, Mayralborn Syiem, he said 17 persons had applied for prospecting licence and the Centre has granted approval to all of them. They are at the exploration stage for generating geological report before obtaining leases, Sangma said.
He also said that since this exercise is being done for the first time, there may be some amount of delay in getting the first few approvals as it will be a learning experience for not only landowners and miners but also government agencies.
The CM said in order to raise the state’s own tax revenue through scientific coal mining, the state government notified Standard Operating Procedures for granting of prospecting licence/mining lease for sustainable and scientific coal mining in the state with an office memorandum for applying to the Director of Mineral Resources to undertake Prospecting Operation for coal under the provisions of Second Proviso to Sub Section (1) of section 4 of the MMDR Act.
This follows the Supreme Court’s order and judgement of July 3, 2019 allowing coal mining in the state in compliance with MMDR Act, 1957 and chapter 5 of Mineral Concession Rules, 1960.
He gave a gist on royalty or revenue collected by the government. He said royalty is Rs 675 per metric tonne (MT), cess is Rs 300 per MT, District Mineral Fund is 10% of the royalty while National Mineral Exploration Trust is 2% of royalty.