• COPE takes offence to GSMB seeking subject Minister’s ‘approval’ for issuing licences, GSMB says process systematised for transparency, legal action  

In the wake of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) criticising the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB) for seeking the subject Minister’s approval for the issuance of licences, the Chairman of the GSMB R. Sanjeepan yesterday (7) said that the COPE has misunderstood the measures taken by the GSMB to systemise the license issuing process.

Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday, he also said that the licences are issued by the Director General (DG) of the GSMB, and not by the Minister, even though all the details about the licenses are forwarded to the DG.

Sanjeepan further noted that the procedure which was taken into debate at the COPE was implemented with the intention of making the license issuing process more transparent and also to make it easy for the law enforcement authorities to take action if anything is reported. “Earlier, most of the licensces were issued by the 23 regional centres of the GSMB while the Head Office issued licences only for large scale mines working on exploration. We understood that this system has many loopholes as sometimes, we cannot find the required documents for the licenses issued by those regional centres. Therefore, the former GSMB Chairman had made a joint system to issue licenses. As a result of that, all the licenses are now issued under the supervision of the Head Office. We gather all the details here, take them into one excel sheet and categorise them into Districts. Those details are forwarded to the Chairman, the DG and the Minister,” he said. He said that they did not seek the approval of the Minister but had just forwarded those details according to the abovementioned procedure. He also said that he explained this to the Chairman of the COPE as well at the recent meeting.