After being successful in coal block auction, now the NDA government at the Centre is focusing on transparent Mines blocks' auction. Following this ambition on the last day of 2nd National Conclave of Minerals and Mines, the Union Minister of States (IC) for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy and Mines Piyush Goyal launched Transparency Auction Monitoring and Resource Augmentation (Tamra) Portal and Mobile Application here on Wednesday.
On this occasion the minister mentioned that, "If India wants to be "Sone ki Chiriya" as it used to be, then there should be a proper expansion of Mines sector." He also assured that Tamra will speed up mining activity in India and facilitate all the stakeholders to track the status of the statutory clearances associated with mining blocks for getting mines to reach till operationalization for the same.
The online portal and mobile application is an interactive platform for all the stakeholders to compress the timelines for statutory and other clearances as it would help minimize the gestation period for commencing production, block availability accordance to its geographic position etc. The application also can be downloaded from Google Playstore.
Tamra also covers the information of the blocks that to be auctioned, block-wise, state-wise and mineral-wise. It also monitors legal clearances and highlights the additional resources generated through e-auction.
Tamra also was launched across 12 mineral rich states so far and the government claimed that 21 mineral blocks, were put up for auction by various states with a total resources base of Rs. 93, 190 crore have been successfully auctioned through e-auction.
The ministry will also notify the necessary rules enabling the auction under the MMDR Amendment Act, 2015. Even more, it formulated the 'Model' tender documents to facilitate the state governments to expedite the auction process.
While speaking on this occasion the Union Minister also mentioned that the ministry is now focusing on off-shore mineral blocks, and the ministry will active 100 more blocks soon.
There are 58 major mineral blocks have been notified by 9 states for auction so far. 1 limestone block in Andhra Pradesh auctioned on June 8, 2016, 2 limestone blocks and 1 gold block in Chhattisgarh on February 18, 19 and 26 21016 respectively. Other states like Jharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka and Rajasthan are also in the same race. Altogether 8 mineral blocks were auctioned from these states in the last year.
The government has also been trying to auction 36 more mineral blocks in the span of coming one year (2017-18) from Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana.
At the same time in its move to make the system more transparent, the Ministry for Mines has also come up with initiatives like surveillance by using Space Technology and Mining Tenement System (MTS). MTS system is segregated into four parts, Registration, Mine Plan, Mining Returns and Reporting. For the last phase of MTS, the ministry is planning to come up with new software.
Moreover, the ministry has come up with a major initiation- using Space Technology for curbing illegal mining issues.
Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) signed a MoU with National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) in the last year to enhance more transparency. The surveillance system called MSS also provides latest satellite image on Geo-referenced mining lease maps to check any illegal mining in vicinity.
By all theses initiatives, the government is trying to push the mining sector which contributes only 2.4% of GDP as it provides basic raw materials to many important industries.