Reforms in mining sector: Minister urges leaseholders to extend support
Vijayawada: Mines minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy has called upon leaseholders to extend their support to reforms in the mining sector that the state government is introducing in a series for the benefit of all the stakeholders.
The minister made the plea at a meeting he held with the leaseholders here on Monday. He said that only 2,826 leases out of the 4,988 issued for mining of minerals in AP were operational while 2,162 remained as non-working leases.
“The state government is planning to introduce transparency in the mining sector and also avoid delay in the sanction of leases to encourage more entrepreneurs to actively take part in mining and help the state earn a good revenue,” he said.
The minister said that a committee would be set up with leaseholders and officials from the mining department to hold a series of meetings with the stakeholders in a month or two. It would come up with suggestions to make the mining sector more transparent and efficient.
Referring to the earlier system of ‘first-come-first-serve’ basis for allotment of mines, the minister said this caused a lot of delay in the leasing out of mines. Several applications were pending without grant of permission for various reasons.
This resulted in the state government losing huge revenue.
He said some leaseholders were not taking up mining and even creating legal hurdles for newcomers in the field. Based on Supreme Court directions, states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand etc introduced e-auction. AP also under the present government introduced a series of reforms in the mining sector with special focus on transparency, he claimed.
The minister said that the state government had issued a GO for issue of leases to those who pay an annual dead rent 10 times more than the normal, and provided an opportunity to those who applied on a first-come-first-serve basis also to avail such a facility. Though the aim was to earn a revenue of Rs 500 crore, these fetched only Rs 142 crore, he said.
The minister said e-auction would help the sanction of leases in a transparent manner and this would also help prospective miners get NOC from the revenue department. This would hopefully also help more entrepreneurs and youths to enter the mining sector, he added.
