KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – India’s Mines Ministry is working on a proposal to bundle mandatory approvals, like forest, environment and pollution, for bidders for 288 mining leases slated to expire in March next year.

According to a government official, putting together mandatory approvals prior to holding auctions would de-risk possible disruptions of mining operations by delays in seeking the approvals required.

He says that the Mines Ministry has been sending repeated reminders to state governments to prepare for the auction process to start in July to avoid a situation wherein new bids are delayed and mining operations across 288 assets are forced to come to a halt when the leases expire on March 31, 2020.

Some of the state government have proposed that existing mandatory approvals granted to each of the mines should not be allowed to terminate along with expiry of lease hold validity and successful bidders should be given additional time to renew these mines even as they continue mining operations under new leasehold agreements.

While the Mines Ministry has been prodding the state governments to get “auction ready”, the latter, on their part, are maintaining that it would be a challenge to complete fresh G2 level of exploration across the leasehold area of the mines that will go up for auction. Officials say that there are not many government exploratory agencies that could complete the task within the limited time available.

The Indian steel industry is wary of iron-ore shortages in the coming year considering that the largest number of mining leases slated to expire are non-captive iron-ore mines with aggregate capacity of about 85-million tons a year, and any delay in the auction of fresh mining leases could disrupt such volume supplies to domestic steel mills, an official in a private steel company has said.