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The government-appointed MB Shah Commission's report on illegal mining in Odisha will be placed before Parliament in its current session, the Cabinet decided on Thursday. The government, however, has decided against extending the commission's tenure, which ended in October last year.
The panel, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice MB Shah, has alleged illegal gains to the tune of INR 59,000 crore by the iron ore and manganese miners in Odisha. Its report on Odisha is likely to become a political hot button issue, as was the case with the Goa report, given that the state is home to a sizeable portion of the country's reserves of iron ore and manganese. The Congress unit in Odisha is already using the Commission's charges of alleged illegal gains to take on the Naveen  Patnaik-led BJD government, which has been in power since 2000.

However, an official who worked closely with the commission pointed out that alleged violations detailed in the report pre-date the nearly 15 years of Patnaik's stewardship of the state. The commission has looked into the operation of mining leases from 1994, when the Environmental Impact Assessment notification was introduced, and leases prior to 1994 as well. The list of offenders also includes mines that are owned by several of the state's Congress leaders or their associates.

The Congress, for its part, will argue that the surge in iron and manganese demand is a phenomenon of the last ten years, and as such it is the BJD and their associates who have gained the most. However, the BJD too will argue that it had consistently asked the Centre to increase royalty rates and dampen the super-normal profits that encouraged overmining in violation of norms. Next few months will see a lot of back and forth between parties on the issue of illegal mining and pecuniary gains from it.

The report, a copy of which has been reviewed by ET, finds mine lease holders in Odisha guilty of violating several mining and environment laws, many of them mining more than volumes permitted by the Indian Bureau of Mines, the Pollution Control Board and environment clearances, and many actually operating without even the mandatory environment clearance. The Commission has decided that such volumes extracted without clearance after January 27, 1994, when the EIA was notified, were illegal and their market value must be recovered from miners.

In early January, the Cabinet had forwarded the report to a committee of secretaries, which over four meetings finalised an action-taken report. The key recommendations of the voluminous five part report, as reported by ET on Jan 3, includes auctioning of all future iron ore leases and sale through eauctions, which Odisha has agreed to. The apex court in its landmark judgment prescribed the same for the next two years for state of Karnataka, which was the first of the iron bearing states to be consumed in mining controversies.

Source-On Request