KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - The Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM), the federal government scientific and governance body, is seeking legal opinion on iron-ore mines in the western coastal state of Goa, shuttered since last year by court orders.

A Supreme Court verdict on the mining leases of 88 iron-ore mines in Goa was cancelled and miners were directed to halt all operations effective March 15, last year. With operations stopped, IBM is in a legal quandary on the process to follow if it has to implement mandatory mine closure plans.

IBM officials said that legal opinion would decide its future course of action as to how to go about implementing mining closure in Goa.

It was pointed out that implementing a final mine closure plan was currently a grey area and that the 88 closed mines could be brought back into production if and when the government decided to hold fresh auctions to allocate these assets to new miners.

Under Mines Conservation and Development Rules, IBM mandates final and progressive mine closure. The progressive mine closure plan is reviewed by IBM every five years and in the case of final mine closure, incumbent miners had to submit final closure plans two years ahead of scheduled mine closures.

However, in the case of the 88 mines, no final closure plans had been submitted by the miners as the leases were cancelled by the apex court, officials said.

The objective of a final mine closure was to ensure that mining lease area rehabilitation did not become a liability once miners ended mining operations and environmental sustainability was ensured. But with the sudden closure of iron-ore mines in Goa, IBM was caught in a bind.

While the onus of implementing a mine closure plan lay with IBM and not the miners, the possibility of these mines being brought back into operation precluded it from enforcing final closure plans.