India: Goa govt suspends iron ore dump auctions following environmental group's objection

• Goa Foundation challenges state's mining dump policy
  
  
• Group states lease needed for dump mining under MMDR Act
  
  

The Goa government has cancelled scheduled auctions of iron ore dumps after a legal notice from the environmental organisation, Goa Foundation.

In 2023, the Goa government announced a new mining dump policy, allowing for the auction of dumps on government land as well as permitting erstwhile lessees to remove material from land once it was considered low grade, whose use had been belatedly legitimised by a conversion fee. This 2023 policy was amended to include areas of other lessees, where ore may have been dumped from another mine, subject to this area having never been worked by the lessee as a mine and the dump itself declared in the mining plans approved by the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM).

The auctions of the material, or 18 dumps, were to be held over 22-25 January 2025 but eventually began on 30 January. The Goa Foundation challenged sections of the dump policy in the High Court of Bombay at Goa and, on the very same day, served the Directorate of Mines and Geology (DMG) with a legal notice warning the department that mining of dumps requires a lease under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) Act. Thus, dumps must be auctioned as a lease as per the Mineral (Auction) Rules 2015.

On Friday, the Directorate cancelled the auctions scheduled on 31 January and 3-4 February, citing a "technical issue" according to media reports. Ultimately, the fate of the dump auctions may end up being decided by the court.

Here is a list of the materials that the Goa government intended to put up for auction and the bidders that had qualified for the technical round.