SC notice to Karnataka govt on FIMI's plea to allow sale of excavated iron ores

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Karnataka government on a plea by Federation of Indian Mineral Industries, Southern Chapter to allow miners, whose leases at Ballari, Tumakuru and Chitradurga, expired on March 30, 2020, lift the excavated iron ores sold by e-auction.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian sought a response from the state government as well as the monitoring committee, among others, and put the matter for consideration on January 29.

The petitioner-body represented by senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Krishnan Venugopal and advocates Rohit Sharma, and Aditya Narayan, contended that although 39 mining leases situated in the districts of Ballari, Tumakuru and Chitradurga, expired as on March 31, 2020, large quantity of iron ore stock, approximately 23.72 lakh MT, that was produced prior to expiry of the leases, have remained lying over there.

It sought a direction to the monitoring committee to put those excavated iron ores for e-auction until the whole stock was sold out.

"Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a grave and deleterious impact on all business activities across all the sectors resulting in cascading fall in demand for iron ore and even delays and lapses in transport, of ore which has been purchased. Consequently, large quantities of iron ore remain unsold and, where sold, un-transported from the
mining lease area, till date," it said.

The industry body also pointed out in Odisha, lessees have access to an open market and are not constrained to sell the ore by e-auction to a closed group of buyers, and can even export the ore. However, lease-holders were not granted similar relaxation in Karnataka.

The statutory prescription affording only six months to the lessees, should not even be made applicable to lessees in Karnataka, and they should be given a longer period, since the situation over there is different from the rest of the country, it claimed.