Incomplete Renewal Form Bars Silica Sand Lessee from Deemed Extension Under MMDR Amendment Act: Allahabad High Court
A Division Bench held that a mining lease renewal application filed without a mining plan and no-dues certificate was not a valid application, disentitling the lessee from the Section 8A(6) deemed extension benefit under the MMDR Amendment Act, 2015.
The High Court of Judicature at Allahabad dismissed a writ petition filed by Rameshwar Dutt Awasthi, the son and claimed successor of a deceased silica sand lessee, who sought to have his mining lease deemed extended for fifty years under Section 8A(6) of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2015. A Division Bench comprising Justice Saral Srivastava and Justice Sudhanshu Chauhan, with the judgment delivered by Justice Saral Srivastava, held that the petitioner's second renewal application filed in 1998 was not a valid application in the eyes of law because it was filed without a mining plan and a no-dues certificate. Since the benefit of Section 8A(6) is available only to a leaseholder who filed a valid renewal application and complied with all lease terms, the petitioner was disentitled from the claimed deemed extension.
The Mining Lease and the Dispute Before the Court
One Bhulli Maharaj, proprietor of M/s Bhulli Maharaj & Sons, Shankargarh, District Allahabad, was originally granted a mining lease over 47.06 hectares in Village Janwa, Tehsil Bara, District Allahabad for extraction of Silica Sand under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 read with the Mineral Concession Rules, 1960. The lease ran from 16 June 1979 to 15 June 1989. A first renewal was granted under Section 8(2) of the Act for a further ten years, up to 15 June 1999, pursuant to a Government Order dated 23 April 1991, with the lease deed executed on 13 December 1993.
Before the first renewal expired, the petitioner's predecessor filed an application on 12 June 1998 for a second renewal for twenty years under Section 8(3) of the Act. Bhulli Maharaj died on 9 July 2005. After his death, his two sons—Rameshwar Dutt Awasthi and Dr. Ganesh Dutt Awasthi—were substituted in pending civil proceedings, but no court ever declared Rameshwar Dutt Awasthi the sole proprietor of M/s Bhulli Maharaj & Sons.
The mining operation was stopped in June 2011 by notice from the Mining Officer for want of an Environment Clearance Certificate. The petitioner obtained forest clearance on 3 September 2012, a no-dues certificate on 31 October 2013, an approved mining plan on 16 July 2015, and an Environment Clearance Certificate on 6 January 2016.
In the meantime, the Central Government on 10 February 2015 notified Silica Sand as a minor mineral, bringing it under the U.P. Minor Minerals (Concession) Rules, 1963 rather than the Mineral Concession Rules, 1960. The MMDR Amendment Act, 2015, inserting Section 8A into the parent Act, also came into force with effect from 12 January 2015.
When the State did not act on the renewal application, the petitioner filed an earlier writ petition, Writ-C No. 52665 of 2016, praying that his lease be deemed extended for fifty years under Section 8A(6). A Coordinate Bench disposed of that petition on 25 January 2017, directing the petitioner to fulfil formalities under the Rules, 1963 and requiring the competent authority to deal with the application within three months. The Additional Chief Secretary thereafter rejected the renewal application by order dated 26 April 2017. That rejection was challenged in the present writ petition.
The Legal Issues: Section 8A(6), Validity of Renewal Application, and the Effect of Reclassification as Minor Mineral
The petitioner's central argument was that by virtue of Section 8A(6) of the Amendment Act, 2015, the lease stood automatically deemed extended, and the State Government had no power to reject or accept any renewal application after 12 January 2015. He contended that his lease was consequently extended for fifty years from 1979 and the authority had wrongly treated the matter as one of renewal rather than statutory extension.
The State countered on several grounds. First, Silica Sand having been declared a minor mineral by notification dated 10 February 2015, Section 14 of the Act applies, making Sections 5 to 13 (including Sections 8 and 8A) inapplicable to it; consequently, mining must follow the Rules, 1963, which contain no provision for second renewal. Second, Rule 24A(6) of the Rules, 1960—which provides deemed extension during pendency of a renewal application—applies only to first renewals, not second renewals, as held by the Supreme Court in Goa Foundation v. Union of India (2014) 6 SCC 590. Third, the second renewal application itself was invalid because the petitioner had not enclosed a mining plan as required under Form-J, Serial 4(xc), and had not supplied several other required particulars. Fourth, the petitioner's lease was not operational on the date Section 8A came into force because he had no Environment Clearance Certificate.
The earlier Coordinate Bench had conditionally held that the petitioner could benefit from Section 8A(6) provided he had “complied with all the terms and conditions of the lease.” It had not, however, examined whether those conditions had actually been met. The present petition thus required the Division Bench to undertake that examination.
How the Bench Reasoned
The Division Bench first addressed the invalidity of the renewal application. Rule 24A(1) of the Rules, 1960 requires an application for renewal to be filed in Form-J at least twelve months before the lease is due to expire. Form-J requires, among other things, a valid clearance certificate of payment of mining dues at Serial 2(vii) and an approved mining plan at Serial 4(xc). The petitioner, while filing his application on 12 June 1998, had filled in Serial 2(vii) as “applied for clearance certificate” and Serial 4(xc) by stating the mining plan was “being processed and will be filed later as soon as is ready.” The no-dues certificate was only obtained on 31 October 2013 and the mining plan was approved on 16 July 2015—gaps of fifteen and seventeen years respectively from the date of the application.
The Bench held that an incomplete Form-J cannot be a valid application under Rule 24A(1). The object of requiring a twelve-month advance filing is to give the competent authority sufficient time to process the application in full. An application missing mandatory particulars does not meet that legislative intent. The Bench observed that the petitioner offered no pleading in the writ petition explaining the sixteen-year delay in supplying the missing documents, leading to the inference that no effort was made to complete the application.
The Bench then applied the Supreme Court's ruling in Common Cause v. Union of India (2016) 11 SCC 455, which held that the benefit of Section 8A(5) and 8A(6) is available only where the leaseholder “had moved a valid application for renewal” and whose application “has not been considered and rejected.” Since the application in the present case was not valid, the petitioner could not invoke Section 8A(6) at all.
The Bench separately examined whether the petitioner had complied with all terms and conditions of the lease as required by Section 8A(6). It found that the petitioner continued mining from 15 June 1999 (expiry of the first renewal) until June 2011 without a valid mining plan. A mining plan is a prerequisite for lawful mining operations. Mining without it constituted a breach of the terms and conditions that would otherwise entitle a leaseholder to deemed extension. The Bench reasoned that where no lease deed is in force, the words “all the terms and conditions of the lease deed have been complied with” in Section 8A(6) must be read to mean that mining operations must be conducted in accordance with all relevant provisions of the Act and Rules. Conducting mining without a mining plan failed that standard.
On the question of the continuance of mining under Rule 24A(6), the Bench followed Goa Foundation and Common Cause: Rule 24A(6) applies only to first renewals. A second renewal under Section 8(3) requires the State Government to record a specific finding that renewal is in the interest of mineral development. Deemed extension provisions cannot override that express statutory condition. The petitioner's continued mining under Rule 24A(6) was therefore illegal from the outset.
On the res judicata argument, the petitioner urged that the earlier Coordinate Bench judgment was final and binding and the authorities could not depart from it. The Division Bench rejected this. The Coordinate Bench had not granted an absolute extension; it had extended the benefit of Section 8A(6) conditionally, subject to the petitioner demonstrating compliance with the lease terms. That condition had not been adjudicated. Since the present proceedings were the first occasion on which compliance was actually examined, the earlier judgment did not foreclose the enquiry. The Bench held that the judgments in National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. v. Union of India (2003) 5 SCC 23 and Neelima Srivastava v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2021) 17 SCC 693, relied upon by the petitioner for the finality of prior judicial decisions, were inapplicable on these facts.
The Bench also held that even if the authority had incorrectly characterised the case as one of renewal (rather than deemed extension) and had incorrectly noted that the lease had lapsed without a formal order to that effect—which it acknowledged was contrary to the requirement under Section 4-A(4) read with Rule 28(1) as explained in Common Cause—those errors could not rescue the petitioner. Courts do not issue futile writs. Since the petitioner could not in any event benefit from Section 8A(6), quashing the impugned order and remanding the matter would serve no purpose.
Order
The Division Bench dismissed Writ-C No. 43237 of 2018 as lacking merit, with no order as to costs. The order dated 26 April 2017 of the Additional Chief Secretary, Government of U.P., rejecting the petitioner's application for extension of the mining lease over 47.06 hectares in Village Janwa, Tehsil Bara, District Allahabad, was upheld.