By – Ansh Goel
Abstract:
The Government of India has developed the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) as a way to increase the domestic reliance on critical minerals: lithium, cobalt, rare Earth elements, and other minerals necessary for a clean energy transition. The NCMM is part of an accelerated domestic extraction policy for critical minerals and was approved by the Union Cabinet in January 2025.
In addition, the NCMM merges with the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) (MMDR) Amendment Act, 2023, and the September 2025 MoEFCC Office Memorandum that will create exemptions from the rules of public consultation under the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, for critical minerals mining (CM). This creates a governance framework where the principles of procedural environmental democracy, i.e., the process of engaging the public in decision-making concerning the ecological impacts of CM extraction, is subordinate to supply-chain imperatives.
This article contends that the ambiguity inherent in the statutory framework resulting from the NCMM creates significant obstacles to establishing binding indicators of the interactions between public consultation and the establishment of the consent regimes established under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and PESA, 1996, thus concentrating both the ecological and social costs of decarbonisation on the tribal communities in Schedule V areas. This recreation of what has been termed “green extractivism” by the leading international scholarship (Poque González and Masip Macia, 2026) requires the establishment of three statutory reforms that would embed binding consent requirements in the MMDR Regulatory Framework.
Introduction
Becoming a top contender in the global competition for resources, including minerals necessary to achieve goals with regard to sustainable energy, will be challenging for India. However, with the approval of the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) on January 29th, 2025, India has developed a comprehensive seven-year plan to guide its efforts and allocate the necessary financing (Rs. 34,300 crore) over the life of the program, while creating a strategic framework to do so. The groundwork for this mission was laid with Part D of Schedule I of the MMDR Amendment Act (2023), which provides for 24 critical/strategic minerals, resources like lithium, cobalt, and graphite that are indispensable to clean energy and defence manufacturing but absent or scarce in India’s domestic supply and creates exclusive auction authority to the Central Government for these minerals under Section 11D, upon which the NCMM builds. By creating a statutory framework, the NCMM seeks to support 1,200 domestic exploration projects by 2030-31 and will expedite the regulatory approval process for the complete value chain of critical minerals in India.
However, what the NCMM does not address are the rights of forest-dwelling communities. The majority of India’s critical mineral reserves lie in or adjacent to the Fifth Schedule Areas. The Gram Sabhas, as defined in the Forest Rights Act (2006) and the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) (1996), have clear authority over land use and forest development in the Fifth Schedule Areas. Tension continues between the NCMM’s push for progress and these laws, and the recent actions of the government serve to heighten tensions and unresolved conflicts between these laws and the NCMM.
The September 2025 Exemption and Its Statutory Consequences
An Office Memorandum (OM) was issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) on September 8, 2025. It invoked the national defence and security exemption provisions under the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006. The OM exempted all mining projects involving Category B and D minerals under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act (MMDR) from mandatory public consultation on the basis of requests received from the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Atomic Energy. This exemption applies across the board to all projects within each of the mineral categories, rather than being specific to the individual projects concerned on the basis of demonstrated need for security.
The essential legal issue is whether the OM exempts projects from prior Gram Sabha consent under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006 and PESA, 1996. It does not and cannot. Section 6 of the FRA makes Gram Sabha consent a statutory precondition for forest land diversion; Section 4(i) of PESA mandates Gram Sabha consultation before any land acquisition in
Scheduled Areas. Neither statute exempts national security or strategic mineral extraction. The OM, being delegated legislation under the EIA Notification, 2006, cannot displace rights vested by Parliament under either Act.
The deeper problem, however, is not legal hierarchy, it is enforcement architecture. The EIA public hearing was the most accessible forum for communities to register objections before clearance. Its removal does not extinguish FRA and PESA rights, but eliminates their most practical enforcement venue. Remaining mechanisms, Sub-Divisional Level Committees under the FRA, are structurally under-resourced and administratively proximate to state governments that are simultaneously project proponents. These rights exist on paper with no practical means of enforcement.
Sijimali: The Governance Failure in Operation
The Sijimali Bauxite Mining Project in Odisha’s Kalahandi and Rayagada districts illustrates this precisely. Under the MMDR Amendment Act, 2023, Vedanta Limited auctioned a 1,548- hectare bauxite block requiring diversion of 708.20 hectares of forest land, triggering mandatory Gram Sabha consent under Section 6 of the FRA. Consent resolutions were challenged on documented grounds of procedural irregularity, including signatures attributed to minors, deceased persons, and non-residents across eight villages simultaneously. Ten villages subsequently held fresh Gram Sabhas between August and September 2024, unanimously rejecting diversion and submitting resolutions to both district administrations. On March 5, 2025, the Orissa High Court directed the Union Government to consider communities’ forest rights claims before granting clearance, yet a government committee recommended Stage-I Forest Clearance in December 2025, and in April 2026 police conducted night operations in affected villages to suppress resistance. Sijimali demonstrates the governance failure precisely: FRA rights formally existed, Gram Sabhas formally rejected the proposal, and a High Court formally intervened, none of which constituted a binding constraint on administrative momentum.
The DMF Is Not a Substitute for Consent
The NCMM identifies the District Mineral Foundation’s benefit-sharing as a vehicle for maintaining a social licence to operate within tribal areas, conflating two separate governance functions. The DMF is created by the MMDR Amendment Act 2015 after a mining lease has already been obtained, and is responsible for the disbursement of royalties, which can only be used for development expenditures that have been approved by the District Administration. It does not have any role in approving projects, does not have jurisdiction over site selection, and has no right of community veto. Meanwhile, the consent provisions in the FRA and PESA take place prior to decisions around the extraction of minerals. Thus, substituting a post-hoc distribution of revenues for a pre-extraction consent fails to meet the statutory framework and represents a mischaracterisation of that framework.
Three Statutory Reforms
According to international scholarship (Poque González and Masip Macia, 2026), the absence of binding consent requirements is the primary structural failure that creates sacrifice zones in extraction-dependent communities. Therefore, India needs a domestic statutory response.
First, Section 11D of the MMDR Act needs to be amended to obtain prior, independently verified Gram Sabha consent as a precondition to auction Part D mineral projects in Schedule V areas. Verification would be conducted independently of the project proponent and state government, requiring legislative amendment not executive action.
Second, the September 2025 MoEFCC OM must be partially rescinded, security-sensitive technical appraisal may proceed centrally, but the community-facing public hearing must be reinstated as a non-waivable requirement under the EIA Notification, 2006.
Third, the DMF mandate must include statutory community representation on appraisal committees, with binding input on site selection before lease grant. Participation without consequence is not co-governance.
Conclusion
The 2023 MMDR Amendment Act, along with the NCMM’s approved fast-tracked processes and the September 2025 EIA exemptions, have been used, in conjunction, to progressively erode the environmental democratic rights established under the FRA and PESA by creating barriers to the enforcement of those rights via administrative means, as opposed to direct statutory repeal. The Sijimali situation exemplifies this outcome: while the statutory rights to legal recognition exist, are exercised, and have been recognized by the courts, those statutory rights have not been able to curtail the momentum of extraction that they were intended to restrict.
This is not an issue of the conflict between development and community rights; it is rather an issue of two competing legislated rights regimes, with the conflicting resolution being imposed by the executive without legislative authority. Any transition to cleaner energy as a result of this resolution does not escape the extraction-based logic of the fossil fuel era. In order to correct this, consent must be entrenched as a fundamental threshold requirement for meeting the MMDR framework and not placed in delegated legislation that can be altered via an intra-office memorandum.
Author Bio
Ansh Goel is a II year Law student at O.P. Jindal Global University and a columnist at Nickeled & Dimed. His research interests span across environmental law, the regulation of artificial intelligence, and intellectual property rights.