Environment Clearance for Mining & Mineral Projects

No. KIPL's QCI-NABET accreditation covers sectors 5(f), 5(g), 5(j), 8(a) and 8(b); item 1(a), mining of minerals, is not on the certificate. What KIPL has is delivered mining experience (EIA work on GMDC's Goniasar and Naredi-Mota-Nandra bauxite leases, the Kawatha manganese mine and district sand ghats) coordinated by Dr. Pramod Chaudhari, who is individually QCI-NABET approved as a Project Coordinator for mining projects. We describe that as experience and as a coordinator-led route, never as organisational sector accreditation, and the NABET badge is not shown on mining work.

Yes. Following the Supreme Court's direction in Deepak Kumar, minor minerals were brought into the clearance net regardless of how small the lease is, and the 2016 amendment to the EIA Notification set out how small leases are categorised. Contiguous leases within 500 metres are also assessed as a cluster on their combined area, so a district tendering several adjoining ghats can find itself with a much larger appraisal than any single ghat would attract.

The mining lease area, as set out in item 1(a) of the schedule to the EIA Notification 2006: 50 hectares and above places most mineral projects in Category A, appraised centrally by the MoEF&CC through its Expert Appraisal Committee, and smaller leases go to the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority. The General Condition can override this: a lease within the prescribed distance of a protected area, a critically polluted area or an inter-state boundary is treated as Category A whatever its size.

Baseline monitoring can start, but the assessment cannot be finalised. The mine plan approved by the Indian Bureau of Mines fixes the production rate, the year-wise pit development, the dump locations and the closure concept, all of which the EIA must assess and the EMP must mitigate. An EIA built on a production figure the approved plan does not carry is the most common reason a mining file is sent back.

It is driven by three things that are not in the consultant's control: the baseline season, which for most leases means at least one full non-monsoon quarter of monitoring; the appraisal committee's meeting calendar; and the scheduling of the public hearing by the State Pollution Control Board and the district administration. We do not quote a fixed turnaround for mining, because a contested hearing or a re-advertised hearing can add a quarter on its own.

Land and livelihood first, then water and dust. Villages along the haul route raise road damage and dust; villages near the pit raise blasting, wells drying and the loss of grazing or cultivation. Where habitation is affected the rehabilitation and resettlement position has to be settled before the hearing, not argued in it, because every commitment made in the hall is read back at appraisal and written into the clearance.