BENGALURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday said there have been many attempts to create confusion on mining lease renewal. “It has been going on since I came to power as some evil forces are constantly working to mislead the Raj Bhavan,” he said.
In a communique, he replied to activist Ramamurthy Gowda, who met Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot on April 1, seeking Siddaramaiah’s prosecution for allegedly illegally issuing mining leases to eight companies.
In the MMDR-1957 Act, which existed before 2015, the renewal was applicable for 20 years and the government gave the conditional in-principle approval only for getting forest clearance for the renewal of mining leases, he clarified.
”On 12.01.2015, the Central Government amended the MMDR Act. It was concluded that the conditional permission letters of 8 companies for renewal of mining leases issued on 09.02.2015 were not valid and they were cancelled and action was taken as per the amended act,” he said.
The State Government, after examining the deemed extension proposals submitted by the Mines Department, cancelled one case without considering it for deemed extension as per the order of the Supreme Court, he said.
For the remaining seven cases, deemed extension letters were issued with the condition of producing statutory forest, environment etc clearance, submitting a non-payment letter and adhering to the government’s action based on the final report of the investigation of various agencies including the CBI and SIT, he elaborated.
“Out of these seven companies, two companies have not been given any mining rights as they have not submitted the statutory returns. In the remaining five cases, three cases were given mining lease rights during the BJP regime in 2020 and 2021.
The remaining two cases were given mining lease rights with conditional deemed extension through supplementary agreements in 2016 and 2018. In all these 8 cases, the government did not lose a single penny. Not a single piece of ore was extracted during this period,” he stated. “The expired mining leases were later auctioned and disposed of as per the rules,” he alleged.