Page 9 - Mines and Minerals Reporter eMagazine - Volume October 2021

INDUSTRY ANALYSIS

tively. The years 2018–19 and 2019–20 saw a
surge in auctions (mainly of brownfield mines,
i.e., already mined blocks, unlike ‘greenfield’
mines that have never been mined). This
surge was triggered by a provision in the
amended Act, which stated that leases of cer-
tain merchant mines would lapse on March
31, 2020 for specific reasons as mentioned in
MMDR Act, 2015.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to ensure mineral
security and continuation of mining, the gov-
ernment has passed the Mines and Minerals
(Development and Regulation) Amendment
Act, 2021 [MMDR Act, 2021], which allows for
valid clearances to be passed on to the new
leaseholder to ensure ‘continuity in mining
operations even with change of lessee’ and
to ‘avoid repetitive and redundant process
of obtaining clearances’ for the same mine.
The amendments in MMDR 2021 have also
the value of minerals which would be despatched over the resolved various pending cases under Sections 10A(2)(b) and
10A(2)(c)—to do with the rights of those who were granted
lifespan of the mining operation. 1 There are two stages in leases before the MMDR Act, 2015—by stating that a ‘large
the auction process, where the highest bid in the first stage
is taken as the floor price of the second stage. The ascend-
ing forward system allows bidders to outbid others in each
stage. The respective State government then granted each
auction’s highest bidder a
mining lease or a composite
The analysis in this paper pro- license (i.e., a prospecting
vides an overview of bids made license-cum-mining lease),
in the auctions of iron ore, subject to their having sat-
limestone, iron ore & man- isfied various conditions.
ganese, bauxite, manganese, The analysis in this paper
graphite, gold, chromite, cop- provides an overview of bids
per, and diamond, with a focus made in the auctions of iron
on iron ore and limestone. ore, limestone, iron ore &
manganese, bauxite, manga-
nese, graphite, gold, chromite, copper, and diamond, with a
focus on iron ore and limestone.

Auctions of Non-fuel Mines: A Summary

Of the 114 auctions held so far, detailed information on the
first 97 auctions (held up to March 2020) is available on Trans-
parency, Auction Monitoring and Resource Augmentation
(TAMRA), 2 the auction monitoring website of the Ministry
of Mines’. 3 Details on the remaining 17 auctions have not
yet been made available. 4 Since detailed information is only
available for 97 auctions, some of the figures and tables in
this paper consider only this data. Figure 1 shows the number
of auctions each year following the amendment of the Act in
2015. The first year saw just six auctions but this number more
than doubled over the next two years, to 15 and 14 respec-

OCTOBER 2021 / MINES & MINERALS REPORTER 7