The National Green Tribunal has directed the concerned state pollution control board and Indian Bureau of Mines regional office to institute stricter, more frequent monitoring of mine closure plan compliance, after an inspection report placed before it showed that several mining lessees in the region had fallen materially behind their progressive reclamation targets under their own approved closure plans.
Under the Mineral Conservation and Development Rules, 2017, every mining lessee is required to submit a mine closure plan at the outset of operations, covering both progressive closure (ongoing reclamation of mined-out areas as extraction proceeds) and final closure once the lease terminates, backed by a financial assurance in the form of a bank guarantee that is released only on satisfactory closure compliance. The Tribunal's order noted that several lessees appeared to be treating progressive closure obligations as backloaded to the final years of the lease, contrary to the plan's own year-wise reclamation schedule.
The Tribunal directed that compliance be assessed not merely against aggregate reclamation figures but against the specific year-wise milestones each lessee's own approved plan sets out, and indicated that persistent shortfall against those milestones should be treated as a ground for withholding partial release of the financial assurance rather than waiting until the end-of-lease final closure stage to assess compliance.
The order signals a shift toward more granular, milestone-based enforcement of mine closure obligations, and mining companies should expect closer scrutiny of year-wise reclamation progress rather than being assessed only at the point of lease expiry or renewal.