SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Dec. 22: As the Jharkhand High Court completes 25 years of its constitutional journey, its jurisprudence reflects the anxieties, aspirations, and contradictions of a State carved out of a land rich in minerals but poor in social outcomes. Few judgments capture this tension as clearly as the decision delivered on January 12, 2023, in Letters Patent Appeal No. 27 of 2008, authored by Justice S. Chandrashekhar.
At the heart of the case was a question that appears technical but is deeply political and moral:
Can the State bind its mineral wealth to a private company for nearly a thousand years?
The Court’s answer was clear and uncompromising. A mining lease claimed to last for 999 years, the Court held, is against public policy, inconsistent with statutory mining law, and incompatible with the constitutional role of the State as trustee of natural resources.
This chapter places the judgment within the broader arc of the Jharkhand High Court’s engagement with land, minerals, and governance during its first twenty-five years.
Land, Minerals, and the Long Shadow of History
The dispute arose from the West Bokaro coalfields, covering about 13,007 bighas across eight villages in the districts of Hazaribagh and Ramgarh. Within this area lay nearly 2,054 acres of Gairmazarua land—land traditionally treated as non-private and governed by tenancy laws.
The private party, Tata Steel Limited, traced its mining rights through a layered set of legal instruments dating back to the pre-Independence period. These included a Head Lease of 1946 and a statutory mining lease dated March 29, 1973, executed between the State of Bihar and West Bokaro Limited, which later merged into Tata Steel.
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Reading these documents together, the company claimed that its mining rights effectively extended for 999 years. On this basis, it argued that the State had no authority to settle surface land in favour of villagers under tenancy laws.
The dispute, therefore, revealed not merely a conflict over land, but a deeper clash between historical privilege and contemporary constitutional governance.
From Writ Court to Fifteen Years of Appeal
In 1997, Tata Steel approached the Jharkhand High Court seeking to restrain the State from making settlements over surface land within the leasehold area. In August 2007, a Single Judge accepted the company’s claim and issued wide-ranging directions, including restraining future settlements, cancelling certain past settlements, and creating an administrative mechanism to review others.
The State of Jharkhand challenged this order through LPA No. 27 of 2008. The appeal remained pending for nearly fifteen years. During this period, villagers filed intervention applications, fearing that long-standing cultivation and settlement rights could be wiped out through executive action.
The long pendency reflects the difficult terrain the Jharkhand High Court has had to navigate—balancing industrial interests, State authority, and grassroots rights in a newly formed State still shaping its institutional identity.
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The Judgment of January 12, 2023
When the appeal was finally decided, the Division Bench, speaking through Justice S. Chandrashekhar, set aside the Single Judge’s order and dismissed Tata Steel’s writ petition in its entirety.
The judgment is notable for its wide scope. It examines:
- mining law and constitutional principles,
- tenancy rights and due process,
- judicial restraint and institutional limits, and
- public policy in the governance of natural resources.
Rather than treating the case as a narrow contractual dispute, the Court framed it as a question of the State’s responsibility across generations.
The Court’s Scepticism of Perpetuity Claims
Justice Chandrashekhar expressed clear scepticism toward claims of near-perpetual rights over natural resources. The Court observed that even where older leases appear generous in duration, they cannot be read as granting absolute or unreviewable control.
The judgment underscores that perpetuity is alien to public law. State largesse, especially involving exhaustible resources like minerals, must always remain subject to periodic review, renewal, and regulation. Any interpretation that freezes State power for centuries would disable future governments and legislatures from responding to changing social, economic, or environmental needs.
Such an outcome, the Court held, would be constitutionally impermissible.
Why a 999-Year Lease Violates Public Trust
At the core of the judgment lies a simple yet powerful idea: the State is not a private landlord.
While private parties may, in some situations, enter into long-term arrangements, the State’s powers are constrained by constitutional purpose. Minerals are finite resources. Once extracted, they are permanently lost. Granting near-permanent control over such resources removes them from democratic oversight.
Justice Chandrashekhar described a 999-year lease as effectively perpetual and held that perpetuity over natural resources is fundamentally incompatible with the public trust doctrine. Such arrangements:
- entrench monopoly,
- block future policy choices, and
- undermine equitable distribution.
This reasoning marks an important development in the Court’s understanding of intergenerational justice.
Public Policy as a Living Concept
Another important contribution of the judgment lies in its understanding of public policy. Rather than treating public policy as fixed at the time of the lease, the Court recognised it as a dynamic and evolving concept.
Justice Chandrashekhar noted that mining policy has undergone significant changes over the decades. Limits on lease duration, restrictions on area, and the introduction of competitive auctions reflect legislative intent to prevent concentration, promote transparency, and ensure fair distribution of mineral wealth.
Against this backdrop, the Court held that a lease arrangement that may once have been tolerated cannot survive if it is fundamentally inconsistent with present-day public policy.
Statutory Change and Policy Continuity
The judgment also places the lease within the evolving framework of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act. Over time, Parliament has:
- limited the duration of mining leases,
- capped the area that a single entity may control, and
- shifted towards auction-based allocation.
Against this background, the Court held that historical leases cannot remain insulated from current statutory intent. Even if valid at the time they were granted, they must conform to present law—or give way to it.
This approach reflects a judiciary attentive to legislative evolution rather than frozen contractual claims.
Jharkhand and the Politics of Extraction
Few States expose the contradictions of extractive development as sharply as Jharkhand. Despite its abundance of coal, iron ore, and other minerals, the State has experienced displacement, environmental degradation, and persistent inequality.
By rejecting near-permanent mining rights, the judgment restores the State’s ability to periodically reassess how resources are allocated. It reinforces the idea that mineral policy must remain responsive to social needs, rather than locked into historical bargains.
Within the Jharkhand High Court’s twenty-five-year jurisprudence, this decision stands as a correction to extractive exceptionalism.
Villagers, Surface Rights, and Due Process
Equally significant is the Court’s insistence that mining leases do not automatically extinguish surface rights. Villagers and raiyats hold legally protected interests under tenancy laws, which cannot be negated through executive action or summary inquiries.
The Court rejected the writ court’s attempt to resolve such disputes administratively, holding that complex questions of land rights must be decided through full adjudication before civil courts.
In doing so, the judgment reaffirmed the centrality of procedural justice in land governance.
A Judgment Still in Motion
Although decisive, the judgment has not reached finality. Tata Steel has challenged the decision before the Supreme Court of India, where the matter remains pending.
Even so, the judgment has already reshaped how mining leases, public policy, and constitutional trusteeship are discussed—both within Jharkhand and beyond.
Stewardship as a Constitutional Ethic
Delivered at the quarter-century mark of the Jharkhand High Court, this judgment reflects the Court’s maturation as a constitutional institution. By holding that a 999-year mining lease violates public policy, it affirms a vision of governance grounded not in permanence, but in responsibility.
The earth, the judgment reminds us, cannot be owned forever. It can only be held in trust.
For a State born out of land and mineral struggles, and for a Court still shaping its legacy, this decision marks a defining moment—one where history yields to constitutional conscience.
