Bengaluru | Jul 10, 2015: On the one hand, the Karnataka government complains of poor revenue mobilisation for fund development programmes but on the other hand, it ignores dues owed by rich mine barons.
By the end of 2014-15 fiscal, the dues from the mine lords to the state had reached Rs 1,056 crore. As many as 71 mine owners have defaulted on payment of Forest Development Tax (FDT) since 2006.
The government, which failed to initiate recovery proceedings against the defaulters for the last 10 years, is in a difficult situation because multiple agencies from both the state and the Centre, are probing the same mine owners in connection with illegal extraction of minerals, violation of environment laws and other kinds of tax evasion. "Even if we initiate recovery proceedings now, it will become complicated for all of us. The mine owners are facing multiple probes and they will come up with some excuse to delay payment. The investigating agencies have seized their files and documents. Despite initiating proceedings against 14 mine owners to recover Rs 159 crore, legal issues are posing hurdles," pointed out a senior officer of the Department of Forests & Ecology, Karnataka.
The extent of dues from the mine lords was revealed by Minister for Forest and Ecology B Ramanath Rai in the Assembly on Wednesday.
He has vowed to recover it at any cost. Interestingly, 69 of the 71 defaulting mine owners who owe the government Rs 991.12 crore as FDT hail from the iron ore-rich Ballari district. The government had imposed FDT on miners after it was found that the movement of iron ore in trucks was damaging the ecology.
The collected FDT was to be used for forestry and afforestation programmes to buffer the impact due to movement of trucks in the forests. A few miners had questioned imposition of FDT in court that had, however, ruled in favour of the government. But, it is not clear how the government has till date utilised the FDT collected from other miners. After Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde in 2008 exposed the iron ore export scam, which had resulted in a loss of over Rs 16,000 crore to the government, iron ore mining was stopped in Ballari district.
Subsequently, the Supreme Court stopped all kinds of mining in the state owing to violation of environmental norms. Mining is now permitted in a limited manner with the Supreme Court giving nod to those miners who have met the environmental norms. The Ballari district and the adjacent Koppal and Chitradurga districts have rich deposits of high-grade iron ore estimated at 2.5 billion tonnes. The private sector, along with the public one, exported iron ore to the global market from 1999 till 2010.
(Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/)