India's Mining Law Reforms
India's mining law has been reopened twice inside two years. The MMDR Amendment Act, 2025, in force since 1 September 2025, is the boldest rewrite of the 1957 statute in a decade: it lets the Centre build mineral exchanges, frees captive miners to sell their surplus, and turns the exploration trust NMET into NMEDT with a larger share of royalty and a remit that runs offshore and overseas. A second amendment is now law: the Lok Sabha carried the 2026 Bill without a debate on 12 August, the Rajya Sabha cleared it before the Monsoon Session closed a day later, and the MMDR Amendment Act, 2026 was notified on 17 August 2026. Its new Section 9D stops state governments taxing mineral rights or mineral-bearing land at all, and wipes out such levies not yet collected.
- MMDR
- NMEDT
- mineral exchange
- critical minerals
- Ministry of Mines
- captive mines
- deep-seated minerals
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