Royalty
Supreme Court upholds states' rights to levy mineral royalties
New Delhi/IBNS: In a 8:1 verdict, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the state governments' right to levy royalties on mineral-bearing lands, media reports said.
The judgement was passed by a Supreme Court bench, which is led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud.
The only judge who ruled in favour was Justice BV Nagarathna.
"Royalty is a contractual (consideration) paid by lessee to lessor," read the CJI as quoted by NDTV and added, " does not have power to tax mineral rights under Entry 50, List I".
"We hold that both royalty and debt rent don't fulfil the ingredients of tax," he added.
In his reason behind the dissenting voice, Justice Nagarathna said, as quoted by the news channel, that the royalty will lead to "unhealthy competition between states to derive revenue... the national market could be exploited... this would lead to a breakdown of the federal system, in the context of mineral development."
In its argument, the central government has said only Parliament has the right to levy tax on minerals.
The states which will benefit from the judgement are Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.
Support objective journalism for a small contribution.
