The State government is in a dilemma over the Centre’s ultimatum to speed up the auctioning of 11 mines in Telangana before June 30 as notified by it, failing which it would go ahead with the auctioning of at least six of those mines as per Section 10B and 11 of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 2015.
The Central Mines Department wrote to the State government on May 20, asking it to expedite the auctioning process of 11 mines notified in Telangana. Government sources said that among the 11 mines are Saidulanama, Sultanpur, and Pusupulabodu in Suryapet district; Chintalathanda in Khammam district and Kampa Junapani limestone mines in Adilabad district. If these mines are not auctioned, the Centre will do so as the State government had agreed to auction them in 2018 itself, said sources.
Government sources claimed that the BRS government, in 2018, decided to auction the three limestone mines and on September 16, 2020, the Chief Secretary wrote a letter to the Union Department of Mines and Minerals to permit the auctioning. In response, the Centre said it didn’t have any objections since the State government had already agreed.
With the June 30 deadline fast approaching, the Telangana government led by A. Revanth Reddy is in a dilemma as auctioning them would mean that the State government would have to risk losing rights over valuable mineral wealth. The government now plans to appeal to the Centre to allocate these to public sector organisations instead of giving them to private companies. “The previous BRS government agreed to auction and had it not been done, the Congress government would not have faced this situation,” an official explained.
The letter to Telangana government to expedite the process is based on the Centre’s decision in 2015 to auction 354 major mineral blocks. Production started in 48 of these blocks and the Centre has also mentioned in the letter that it was bringing revenue to the respective States.
Congress government has alleged that the BRS government’s policy to auction mines started eight years ago to benefit some private companies. “As a part of that, the Satthupalli and Koyagudem Kanyanikhani mines, which were supposed to be given to Singareni, were acquired by private companies in the auction in 2023,” government sources said.
“The previous government led by K. Chandrasekhar Rao also leased the Tadicherla coal mine in Bhupalapally area to a private company for 30 years,” sources said, adding that the Bharat Rashtra Samithi was trying to blame the current Congress government for the dilemma it was pushed into due to policies initiated during its regime.
