Bengaluru: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has said that there have been many attempts to create confusion regarding the issue of mining lease renewal.

Such misinformation has been going on since I came to power. The Chief Minister said that some evil forces are constantly working to mislead the Raj Bhavan. The details of the Chief Minister's press statement regarding the news published in the media about 8 mining companies that were published today are as follows.

In the MMDR-1957 Act, which existed before 2015, the renewal was applicable for a period of 20 years. According to it, the government "has given conditional in-principle approval only for obtaining forest clearance for the renewal of mining leases."

On 12.01.2015, the Central Government amended the MMDR Act through an ordinance and after conducting various stages of verification, it was concluded that the conditional permission letters of 8 companies for renewal of mining leases issued on 09.02.2015 were not valid and they were cancelled and action was taken as per the amended Act.

Later, the State Government, after examining the deemed extension proposals submitted by the Mines Department as per the rules, cancelled one case without considering it for deemed extension as per the order of the Hon'ble Supreme Court. For the remaining 7 cases, deemed extension letters were issued with the condition of producing statutory forest, environment etc. clearance letters, submitting a non-payment letter and adhering to the government's action based on the final report of the investigation of various agencies including CBI, SIT.

However, out of these 7 companies, 2 companies have not been granted any mining rights as they have not submitted the statutory returns. In the remaining 5 cases, 3 cases were granted mining lease rights during the BJP regime, i.e. in 2020 and 2021. In the remaining two cases, conditional deemed extension mining lease rights were granted through supplementary agreements in 2016 and 2018.

Therefore, in all these 8 cases, the government did not lose a single penny. Not a single piece of ore was extracted during this period. In this regard, cases had been filed in the past by opposition parties and some individuals in several institutions. The complaints were closed as there was no substance in these complaints.

The opposition parties had also questioned the matter in the House. Kumaraswamy, who is the current Union Minister for Heavy Industries and Steel, also held a press conference on 14.01.2018. However, there was no substance in any of these cases. Because, all these 8 cases were processed as per the rules of the new ordinance. The expired mining leases were later auctioned and disposed of as per the rules.

After about 10 years, this case has started being brought up with political malice. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has appealed to the intelligent people of the country not to believe the evil political conspiracies that are trying to poison the minds of the people of the country by filling them with poison for a matter that has no substance.