Now Reading: Centre moves to bar states from taxing mining, overriding Supreme Court ruling
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Centre moves to bar states from taxing mining, overriding Supreme Court ruling
Centre moves to bar states from taxing mining, overriding Supreme Court ruling
The Union government introduced the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 in Lok Sabha on Monday to bar states from imposing any tax, cess or levy on mineral rights…
The Story in Brief
The Union government introduced the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 in Lok Sabha on Monday to bar states from imposing any tax, cess or levy on mineral rights or mineral-bearing lands. This move comes over two years after the Supreme Court affirmed states' power to tax mining, ruling that royalty paid to the Centre is not a tax. The bill says multiple state levies create a cascading tax effect, high compliance costs, and hurt small operators, slowing economic growth. It proposes that no such state levy shall stand except as prescribed by the Centre. However, any tax already collected by a state before the bill passes will not be refunded.
The Indian Opinion
The usual narrative pits this as Centre versus states, but the real fight is between mining firms and local communities who bear the dust and water depletion. The bill’s retroactive protection of state tax collections already made is a clever sop, but the core move, banning future state levies on mineral-bearing land, centralises control and risks shortchanging affected villages. The test will be whether the compensation fund for mining-affected areas actually grows or shrinks under this new regime.
Source: livemint.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
