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Samaj Parivartana Samudaya & Ors. v. State of Karnataka & Ors.

Interlocutory Application · Neutral citation not assigned (Interlocutory Application Nos. 259 & 263 in I.A. No. 259 in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 562 of 2009)Decided 1 Sept 2016
Interlocutory Application Nos. 259 & 263 in I.A. No. 259 in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 562 of 2009
Justice Ranjan Gogoi · Justice Prafulla C. Pant · Justice A.M. Khanwilkar

Background

This order was made in the long-running Karnataka illegal-mining writ petition, whose main petition had already been finally disposed of by the Supreme Court's order dated 18.04.2013. It is a later order on two interlocutory applications filed in 2016 by the Karnataka Iron and Steel Manufacturers Association, which complained that the state-run National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) had started charging a higher "differential" floor price for iron ore sold in Karnataka compared with Chhattisgarh, and separately resisted a related plea by a mining lessee (Vedanta Limited) to be allowed to export its ore.

Decision Breakdown

The Court noted that its earlier orders (affirmed in the 2013 final order) had already left the fixing of base/floor price to the concerned lessee, and that a similar plea to cap NMDC's pricing had previously been rejected in 2014. It held that NMDC working under the Court's special dispensation did not by itself bar NMDC from adopting a dual/differential pricing mechanism if justified by market forces, and found nothing in the Central Empowered Committee's report to show the Karnataka pricing was not market-driven. It also held that Vedanta's inability to sell its ore because of its own pricing could not justify permission to export, since export permissions must follow general norms yet to be framed, not one-off exceptions. Accordingly, I.A. No. 259 of 2016 (and the dependent I.A. No. 263) were dismissed, with the broader questions of NMDC's special dispensation and export norms left to be taken up separately later.

Lesson Learnt

Even after a Supreme Court-monitored matter is "finally" disposed, follow-on interlocutory applications can keep arising for years under the same case number, and the Court will only interfere with a regulator's or public-sector entity's commercial pricing decisions if there is actual evidence it is not market-driven, not merely because a trade body finds it commercially inconvenient.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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