The MMDR Bill had proposed sharing of miner's profits with the project-affected people amongst other things The UPA's attempt to overhaul the law governing malpractice-ridden mining sector by replacing a 50-year-old legislation, has been wasted with the new mining bill lapsing. The Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation (MMDR) Bill had proposed sharing of miner's profits with the project-affected people amongst other things, but with the last Lok Sabha being dissolved for elections, the Bill has lapsed. Many from the mining industry are, however, heaving a sigh of relief with this development as the industry was not happy with the current provisions of the Bill. The future of the current bill would now be in the hands of new government. After years of deliberations, the Bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha in December 2011, and was then referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Coal and Steel. The committee submitted its report in May 2013 with around 100 suggestions including doing away with a clause in the proposed mining Bill which had mandated coal and lignite companies to share 26 per cent of their profit with local communities impacted by mining operations. It, instead, suggested royalty paid during the financial year to the state government should be the basis for benefit sharing. RK Sharma, secretary general of Federation of Indian Mineral Industries, said the new Bill, in its current form,would have killed the existing mining industry. "The Bill was anti-mining. We are happy that it did not come in the same form." Kameswara Rao, leader, energy utilities and mining, PwC, says the new mining Bill was pending for so long that the number of issues moved ahead and it needs a relook now. "We need to have stronger provisions for various issues such as contracting, trading,exploration and others. Lot of development has happened since the first draft of the new Bill. The Bill in the current shape would have been called inefficient," Rao adds. The mining industry was opposed to profit sharing clause saying the profit sharing clause would take a toll of about Rs 15,000 crore. Even the ministry of mines was of the view that it had considered the option of 26 per cent of shares to the affected persons but the proposal was found non-feasible due to the complexities involved in the distribution of shares and in calculation of profits. Rao said in-principle there was no debate on profit sharing royalty payment to the affected parties but the issue was how efficiently it would be implemented. "Globally, all the core mining countries such as Australia, Canada, South Africa have variants of such proposals which are meant for local development." A senior official from mines ministry said it was impossible to study 107 suggestions made by the standing committee and incorporate in the Bill in such a short span of time. "Decision making had slowed down in the government as officials were wary," said the official. For non-coal and non-lignite miners, the bill had proposed payment of an amount equivalent to royalty paid by the firms to the state government. This recommendation was accepted by the Parliamentary panel. The collected money was proposed to be used for welfare of the project-affected persons through a newly created District Mineral Foundation (DMF). The panel had recommended to bring DMF under the CAG audit purview and increasing local community's representation in the DMF council. The industry was also of the view that new Bill would increase the tax outgo by up to 100 per cent. For bauxite, the tax outgo will be 110 per cent,for iron ore, it would be 55 per cent and for for coal, it would be 61 percent, according to industry chamber FICCI. Besides, the new bill also proposed giving full powers of extension, grant of mineral concession to the states. It also provided for allocating minerals concessions for all major minerals, except coal and lignite, mainly through the competitive bidding route. Other big proposals included setting up of a National Mining Regulatory Authority for resolving issues in major minerals and setting up of State Mining Regulatory Authority for issues in minor minerals. It also talked about creating a national and a state-level mineral funds.