National Mineral Policy 2006 - Department of Mines

the condition that both the right for ML and the obligation to establish industry would pass onto the transferee together.5.11 The issue relating to the grant of ML in respect of ore bodies delineated by publicagencies was debated intensively in the Committee and it was agreed that the auctionprocedures could be waived in situations in which the applicant was willing to make acommitment to establish an industry based on the mineral within the state. In such cases, thefull cost of exploration by the public agency concerned should be recovered from the lessee.5.12 The guiding principle in respect of value addition should be that where amongmultiple applicants for LAPL/PL or ML there are applicants proposing to set up an industrybased on the mineral, preference may be given to such applicants, but where none of theapplicants is willing to set up an industry their applications should be considered underSection 11(3) within the time limits laid down in Rule 63A of the MCR, and not kept pendingor rejected in the hope that value-adders would make an application in future. Equally,applications of sole applicants should not be kept pending on the ground that the applicationdoes not envisage the setting up of an industry based on the mineral.STRIKING A BALANCE5.13 In light of the above and taking into consideration the proposals that have beenoutlined in Chapter 1 on non-exclusive RP, LAPL, and unbundling of mineral concessions,the Committee recommends that Section 11 of the MMDR Act be modified so as to provideas follows in cases in which no notification has been made:(i)(ii)Applications for non-exclusive RP should be freely granted, withsomewhat light scrutiny of the applicant on the basis of the parameters (a)to (c) in existing Section 11(3);Once non-exclusive RP has been granted, the progression to LAPL by theRP holder should be seamless (on the basis of first-in-time principle asmentioned in paragraph 1.41), provided the non-exclusive RP holder givesthe data of reconnaissance operations establishing mineral resources in thearea; at this stage, the scrutiny of the LAPL applicant against the117