National Mineral Policy 2006 - Department of Mines

• Section 12(1) of the MMDR Act should be amended to provide that in addition to theregisters of applications for RP/PL/ML and registers of RP/PL/ML that are current,registers should also be maintained for relinquished areas in each case. Further, a newSection 12(3) should be introduced to require the concerned authorities to maintainthe entire data of Section 12(1) digitally and to provide on-line access to the public.[2.27]• Coordinates of areas granted, applied, as well as relinquished should be put on thewebsites of the state Mining and Geology Departments and IBM. [2.27]PROCEDURE FOR DISPUTE RESOLUTION• The MMDR Act and Rules should be amended to enable the powers of the Centralgovernment to be exercised by an independent tribunal so that appropriate arm’slength is maintained between the Ministry of Mines as a regulator and that Ministry asan involved party. The tribunals should have experts in mining administration andmining laws as members. Independence of the tribunal should be ensured byappointing members on the basis of the recommendations of a Selection Committee,with a high-level Chairman and outside experts serving on such a committee.Members of the tribunal should be given security of tenure by being appointed for afixed term. Such an independent and dedicated tribunal will also ensure timelydisposal of revision cases and will find better acceptability among the investors.Furthermore, the tribunal should also have jurisdiction for revising the orders of theCentral government. [2.29]FOREST CONSERVATION AND ENVIRONMENT PROTECTIONICMM AND SDF• The Ministry of Mines and MOEF should jointly set up a working group to prepare aSDF specially tailored to the context of India’s mining environment, taking fully intoaccount the work done and being done in ICMM and the IUCN. The Indian SDFcomprising of principles, reporting initiatives, and good practice guidelines unique to202