Nagpur | Oct 04, 2017: According to secretary of union ministry of mines Arun Kumar, central government targets to auction Rs2 lakh crore worth of minerals in 2017-18. He informed that auction of only Rs1,08,000 worth of minerals was done between January 2015 and March 31, 2017. He added that minerals worth Rs48,000 crore were sold in last six months and another Rs1.50 lakh crore worth of minerals will be sold in next six months.

Kumar revealed the figures with a view to justify government's move of auctioning the minerals. The Mines and Minerals Amendment Act, 2015 has introduced the concept of auctioning iron ore, bauxite, limestone, manganese and other minerals, putting an end to an almost 60-year-old system of allocating mining lease on a 'first-come-first-serve' basis.

Kumar was addressing the inaugural ceremony of the 20th convention of India Geological Congress (IGC) 'Make in India — Challenges and Opportunities for mineral, mining and energy resources'. Kumar was the chief guest, N Kutumba Rao, director general; Geological Survey of India (GSI) was the guest of honour. Ranjan Sahai, CG of Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), OP Verma, executive president of IGC, RR Mishra, CMD of WCL, Gopal Dhawan, CMD of Mineral Exploration Corporation Limited (MECL) and MK Khandelwal, director of Atomic Mineral Directorate (AMD) also attended the event.

Accepting the government is still facing criticism for auctioning of minerals, he said the centre is ready to improve the auction norms which will be finalized in November.

Dhawan, who is the IGC president, said, "This convention is taking place at a crucial time when the mine and mineral industry is going through revolutionary reforms. The amendments that took place in 2015 led to transparent allocation of minerals through auction."

"Now it has become mandatory to do detailed exploration. The demand of exploration in non-coal mineral have suddenly increased manifolds, rather it has become a challenge for us to meet the expectation of the country," said the MECL CMD.

Dhawan confessed, "Our labs are still not equipped with the kind of equipment we need. I am not hesitant to talk about our latest project where this lacuna is clearly visible."

"Currently MECL is involved in resource estimation of a coal block at Karnataka. IBM is doing the beneficiation study. Because of the importance of the block, people at top level of both the organizations are personally foreseeing the project. Both the parties are surprised to know that our combined capacity is not adequate to deliver results in time. We had to rope in a private agency and private lab to do some part of our resting program."

(Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)