A mining lease was cancelled in 2010. Then the High Court said: grant it anyway.

In 2006, the government said: yes, you can mine here. In 2010, it said: no, you can't. Then the High Court stepped in.

A private firm had chased a single mining lease for seventeen years — through rejections, revocations, and a law that wiped out every pending application in the country. The question that reached the Supreme Court was deceptively simple: could a 1998 application survive a 2015 law that killed all pre-existing mining bids, when the government had already cancelled its approval a decade ago and nobody had challenged that cancellation?

The 1998 application — and the reversal nobody fought

In March 1998, a company called Chiranjilal Industries applied for a mining lease to extract Dolomite in West Bengal. The state government rejected the application in 2003 — a state corporation called WBMDTCL had applied for the same area first, and under Section 11(2) of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 (the law that gives priority to the earliest applicant), the state corporation had a preferential right.

Then something unusual happened. In October 2006, the government recalled its own rejection and issued a Letter of Intent — a formal document, crisp and official, stating the government intended to grant the lease. For four years, the firm held that paper, believing the lease was coming.

It didn't.

In December 2010, the government cancelled the recall order. The Letter of Intent was revoked. The firm did not challenge this cancellation in court. The 2010 order became final — legally, it was as if the 2006 recall had never happened. In the courtroom, when the state's counsel mentioned the 2010 cancellation, a brief silence fell — a document that could have been fought was simply left to die.

When the High Court stepped in

The firm did not give up. It filed a writ petition (a legal request asking the High Court to review a government decision) in 2014, arguing that it deserved the lease. The Calcutta High Court agreed. In September 2014, it directed the state government to grant the mining lease.

The state government complied — sort of. In July 2015, it issued a Grant Order. But this was no ordinary grant. It came with strings attached: the firm needed consent from the landowners (called raiyats under the West Bengal Land Reforms Act), a conversion certificate for the land's change of use, and environmental clearances. The Grant Order was conditional and provisional — it was not a done deal. The file, when it reached the Supreme Court, felt thin — a stack of pre-conditions, not a completed grant.

Meanwhile, Parliament had changed the rules of the game entirely.

The 2015 law that reset everything

In 2015, the MMDR Act was amended. A new section — Section 10-A(1) — was inserted. It said: all applications for mining leases that were pending on the date the amendment took effect were now ineligible. Period. The government did not have to process them. They were dead. The stack of pending applications that the amendment was meant to clear was vast — this was the legislative broom that swept them all away.

There were three narrow exceptions under Section 10-A(2):

• Applications under Section 11-A (which deals with certain reserved areas)
• Cases where the applicant already held a reconnaissance permit or prospecting licence and had changed their position based on it
• Cases where the Central Government had communicated its approval, or the State Government had issued a Letter of Intent, before the amendment took effect

Dolomite was also reclassified as a minor mineral in 2015. This meant the West Bengal Minor Minerals Concession Rules, 2016 now governed the application. Rule 61 of those rules said the same thing: pending applications were ineligible unless a Grant Order or Letter of Intent was still alive.

The three rounds of litigation — a procedural marathon

The firm's battle was not a single writ petition but a series of legal skirmishes spanning years. The first round began with Writ Petition 7505(W)/2003, filed before the Calcutta High Court. That petition was disposed of ex parte in March 2014 — the state government was not present when the order was passed, and the court's decision did not address the 2010 cancellation. The state then issued a fresh rejection in July 2014, again citing WBMDTCL's priority.

The second round followed swiftly. In September 2014, the firm filed Writ Petition 21358(W)/2014. This time, the High Court allowed the petition and directed the state to grant the lease. The smell of old paper from the case file must have been thick by then — the original application was sixteen years old. The state government, under court order, issued the conditional Grant Order in July 2015.

The third round came in 2016. The firm filed Writ Petition 20309(W)/2016 before a single judge of the Calcutta High Court, seeking execution of the lease. The single judge allowed the petition in April 2017. The state appealed. The Division Bench heard the intra-court appeal — FMA 1458/2017 — and dismissed it in October 2018, directing the government to execute the mining lease. The bench's expression during that hearing must have been one of impatience — the case had dragged on for two decades, and the High Court seemed determined to end it.

It was only then that the State of West Bengal appealed to the Supreme Court.

The argument that failed

The firm argued that it fell within the exception. It had a Letter of Intent from 2006. It had a Grant Order from 2015. Surely, it said, these documents meant the government had already decided to grant the lease — the application was not really "pending" in the ordinary sense.

The state government disagreed. The 2006 Letter of Intent had been cancelled in 2010. That cancellation was never challenged. It was as if the Letter of Intent had never existed. And the 2015 Grant Order was conditional — it required the firm to obtain landowner consent, conversion certificates, and environmental clearances before it could take effect. A provisional grant was not a completed grant.

The High Court had directed the government to execute the mining lease despite these problems. The state appealed to the Supreme Court.

What the Supreme Court said

The bench — Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Aravind Kumar — delivered its judgment on September 12, 2023. The court held that the High Court had erred.

First, the 2010 cancellation of the Letter of Intent had attained finality. The firm never challenged it. As the court held, a Letter of Intent that has been cancelled and has attained finality cannot be relied upon to invoke the proviso to Rule 61 of the Concession Rules 2016 or Section 10-A(2)(c) of the MMDR Act. A cancelled document is a dead letter — legally meaningless.

Second, the Grant Order of July 2015 was conditional and provisional. It required the firm to obtain multiple clearances and consents before it could become effective. The court held that a grant hedged with pre-conditions is not a completed grant. It cannot be used to argue that the application was "granted" before the 2015 amendment took effect.

Third, the exceptions under Section 10-A(2) are exhaustive and must be strictly construed. They cover only three specific situations: applications under Section 11-A, reconnaissance or prospecting licence holders who altered their position, and cases where the Central Government communicated approval or the State Government issued a Letter of Intent before the amendment. The firm did not fit into any of them. The 2006 Letter of Intent was gone. The 2015 Grant Order was not a completed grant. The application was, for all legal purposes, still pending — and therefore dead under Section 10-A(1).

The court allowed the state's appeal. The High Court's direction to execute the mining lease was set aside.

Why this matters for every pending application

This judgment is a warning for anyone holding a conditional government approval. If your Letter of Intent or Grant Order has been cancelled and you did not challenge it, that document is worthless. And if your grant is provisional — requiring clearances, consents, or certificates before it becomes effective — it may not protect you from a change in the law.

The 2015 amendment was designed to clear the backlog of pending mining applications. The Supreme Court has now confirmed that the exceptions are narrow and strictly enforced. A cancelled approval is not an exception. A conditional grant is not a completed grant.

THE PLAY: If you hold a mining approval that was cancelled and you never challenged that cancellation, do not rely on it — the law will treat it as if it never existed.

The 1998 application was seventeen years old when the Supreme Court finally shut the door. It had survived rejections, revocations, and a High Court order. It could not survive a cancelled letter that nobody bothered to fight.