Draft MMDR Amendment Would Remove Caps on Mining Lease Area Across India

India's draft Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill 2026 proposes to eliminate area limits on mining leases, currently capped at 10 square kilometres per lessee for major minerals under Section 6 of the MMDR Act 1957. Critics warn the change will intensify corporate concentration in mineral-rich regions that overlap with forests, Adivasi territories and agricultural land.

Current law caps mining leases at 10 sq km and prospecting licences at 25 sq km per entity in a given state, though earlier amendments already allowed the Union government to increase these limits 'in the interest of mineral development'. India has 3,007 mining leases for major minerals covering approximately 2.82 lakh hectares, with just 160 leases — slightly over 5 per cent of the total — accounting for over half the leased area. In Madhya Pradesh, coal leases have already been permitted up to 125 sq km using existing executive discretion. The proposed Bill would extend removal of area limits to strategic and critical minerals including lithium and rare earth elements.

The government justifies the proposed change as necessary to increase auction participation, attract investment and enable economies of scale. However, a 2022 MMDR public consultation conducted by the ministry itself cautioned that 'allowing acquisition of disproportionately large mineral bearing areas would defeat the present system of auctioning through fair and transparent mechanisms'. Associations representing smaller steel and pellet manufacturers have opposed the move, warning that large well-capitalised firms would corner resources and undermine fair access. Mining-induced displacement in India already involves documented gaps in rehabilitation and community consent.

The removal of area limits concentrates environmental and social risk in fewer operators, raising concerns about regulatory capture in regions where a single operator may become too economically significant to discipline effectively. In Odisha's Kashipur, long-term protests over unfulfilled development commitments from an alumina refinery illustrate how socio-economic grievances persist years after mines become operational. The author argues that genuine MMDR reform must centre land rights, ecological sustainability and community accountability rather than operational scale, and calls on policymakers to reject area limit removal as inconsistent with equitable and ecologically responsible mineral governance.

Key figure — 3,007 mining leases for major minerals covering approximately 2.82 lakh hectares across India