The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, which received Presidential assent on August 17, is easy to view as another technical amendment concerning mining taxation. That would perhaps be an incomplete reading. Mining sits at the beginning of several economic activities that we generally discuss separately—steel, cement, infrastructure, manufacturing, transport and, increasingly, the energy transition. What happens to the cost and availability of minerals does not remain within the boundaries of a mine. It travels across industries. The amendment seeks to bring greater predictability to this area by placing conditions on the manner in which States can impose taxes, cesses and other levies on mineral rights and mineral-bearing land. The concern behind the change is understandable. Mining requires large investment, the life of a project may run into decades and a mineral deposit cannot be relocated merely because the tax environment changes. The government has argued that multiple levies, different rates across States and taxes introduced after mining operations have commenced create uncertainty and may even make some projects commercially unviable. Yet, the issue is not as simple as making mining less costly. Natural resources belong to a larger economic and social setting. The real policy question is whether India can provide stability to investors without weakening the legitimate interests of the States in which those resources are located.
The amendment makes a noticeable departure from the earlier legal position. As a snapshot, Section 2 of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 has been enlarged so that mineral-bearing land also comes within the field of Union regulation, and Section 3 now provides a statutory meaning for the expression. The more consequential change is the introduction of Section 9D. Until now, the Act did not contain such a specific provision governing the manner in which States could impose taxes or cesses on mineral rights and mineral-bearing land. The new provision places that power within conditions to be prescribed by the Centre. Section 13 has also been amended to provide the necessary rule-making authority. Seen together, these are not minor drafting changes. They alter the space within which States can exercise their fiscal powers over mineral resources and move the law towards a more centrally regulated arrangement. It is this shift, rather than the wording of any individual section, that gives the 2026 amendment its wider significance.
There is, interestingly, a sustainability case for the amendment, though one should be careful not to describe it as an environmental legislation. Sustainability today is wider than environmental protection alone. It includes economic resilience, responsible resource use and the ability of an economy to meet future requirements without creating avoidable vulnerabilities. India's ambitions in renewable energy, electric mobility, battery storage, modern infrastructure and advanced manufacturing will require dependable mineral supplies. Greater certainty in mining investment can encourage exploration and domestic production and may reduce excessive dependence on imports. From that angle, the amendment can support sustainable industrial development. But sustainability has another side which is sometimes lost when policy is viewed only from New Delhi or from a corporate balance sheet. Mining takes place somewhere. Land is disturbed somewhere. Water, forests, roads and local communities experience its consequences somewhere. Those costs are largely local, even when the mineral serves a national market. A sustainable mining framework must therefore ask not simply whether more minerals are being produced, but what happens to the region from which they are extracted. Minerals are exhaustible. Once removed, they are not available to the next generation. Some part of the value created today should consequently leave behind something more permanent—better infrastructure, ecological restoration, education, livelihoods and stronger communities. Otherwise, we may have efficient extraction without necessarily achieving sustainable development.
This is also why the objection raised by Kerala deserves to be heard as part of the policy debate rather than dismissed as another Centre-State disagreement. Kerala Chief Minister V. D. Satheesan has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a review of provisions in the amendment. His principal concern is that the proposed restrictions on taxes, cesses and levies relating to mineral rights and mineral-bearing land could curtail the constitutional and fiscal powers of States and affect their revenues. He has also referred to the Supreme Court's 2024 judgment which recognised that royalty is not a tax and dealt with the States' powers in relation to mineral taxation. Satheesan's position becomes especially relevant because Kerala combines mineral resources with a particularly sensitive ecological setting. The State cannot look at mineral-bearing land only in terms of commercial extraction; land use in Kerala invariably intersects with population density, coastal areas, environmental vulnerability and competing developmental requirements. The constitutional question, too, is unlikely to disappear. The Supreme Court held in 2024 that while Parliament may impose limitations on the States' power to tax mineral rights, the taxation of land occupies a different constitutional space. Cooperative federalism cannot merely mean consultation after a policy has been decided; in matters involving natural resources and State revenues, consultation has to form part of policy design itself.
There is another stakeholder in this discussion which is rarely mentioned—academia. Universities should have a much larger role in debates of this nature. Mining policy cannot be understood adequately from one discipline. A lawyer will see constitutional powers and regulatory questions; an economist will examine taxation, investment and State revenues; an environmental scientist will look at ecological costs; a management scholar may examine project viability, ESG and stakeholder interests. When these perspectives are brought together, the discussion changes considerably. Universities and research institutions can undertake independent studies on the real cost of mineral extraction, the economic impact of different taxation models, rehabilitation of mining areas, inter-generational equity and the distribution of mining benefits among States and local communities. They can also provide a neutral platform where governments, industry and communities can engage without every discussion becoming adversarial. There is scope here for serious consultancy and policy research by universities, particularly through interdisciplinary centres involving law, economics, management, sustainability and public policy. The classroom should benefit as well. Questions such as this allow students to understand that sustainability is not a chapter to be studied separately from finance or law; it is often the point where finance, law, governance and society meet.
For companies, too, the amendment should encourage a wider understanding of cost. The cost of mining is not merely the amount spent in removing a mineral from the earth. Royalty, taxation, transportation, environmental compliance, rehabilitation, financing, mine closure and obligations towards communities together constitute the economic cost of extraction. Cost and management accountants, finance professionals and sustainability specialists can help management place these elements within the investment decision rather than calculate some of them only after the project is underway. India certainly needs a mining environment in which investors are not confronted with unpredictable fiscal demands. It also needs mineral-producing States to have adequate resources and a meaningful voice in the management of their natural wealth. These objectives need not be contradictory. Much will depend upon the rules framed under the amended law and, perhaps more importantly, upon the spirit in which they are framed. The success of the 2026 reform should therefore not be measured only by whether mineral production rises or investments increase. A better measure would be whether India is able to extract what it needs for economic development while leaving mining regions economically stronger, environmentally safer and fairly compensated. Minerals may be finite; the development created from them need not be.
Author Dr. Anil G. Variath is a Professor & Dean at Amrita International School of Law, Coimbatore & Dr. Ranjith Krishnan is an Associate Professor at CHRIST University, Delhi NCR. Views are personal.