Patnaik tells Odisha BJP MPs the mining amendment is a Rs 12,000-crore loss

Biju Janata Dal president Naveen Patnaik wrote on Saturday to Bharatiya Janata Party MPs from Odisha asking them to seek a reversal of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2026. He called 13 August, the day the Bill passed the Lok Sabha with their support, a black day for the state.

Patnaik said the estimated annual revenue loss exceeds Rs 12,000 crore and that the cumulative cost over years would run into lakhs of crores. He argued that the amendment takes from the state government the power to levy taxes, cesses and other charges tied to mineral rights and to mineral-bearing land. Odisha, he wrote, accounts for nearly 44 percent of India's mineral wealth and has supplied the raw material for the country's steel, power, mining and infrastructure industries for decades.

The procedural complaint

The letter says the Bill had less than ten minutes of discussion in the Lok Sabha despite its reach. Patnaik called it an ordinary piece of legislation only in the time it was given, not in its effect. He had already written to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on 14 August asking for a special Assembly session and a resolution against the changes. Saturday's letter moves the demand from the state house to the state's BJP delegation in Parliament.

The former chief minister framed the vote as a choice the MPs still own. History, he wrote, will judge them not by the party they stood with but by whether they stood up for Odisha. He asked them to listen to their conscience and to the people who sent them to the Lok Sabha.

What the amendment touches

Patnaik's objection centres on language that extends Union regulation to mineral-bearing lands, not only to the minerals once they are extracted. Land and the fiscal claims attached to it sit in the state's column of the Constitution. If the Union can restrict what a state may charge on that land, Odisha's budget math on royalties, cesses and related levies changes. The Rs 12,000-crore figure is his estimate of that change. The central government has not published a matching state-wise scorecard in response to his letters.

Mining states have made this argument before, after Supreme Court rulings on whether royalties are taxes and after earlier MMDR revisions. The 2026 text is the latest turn. Odisha is the extreme case because of the 44 percent share. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and parts of Rajasthan face smaller versions of the same arithmetic.

The political geometry

Patnaik is Leader of the Opposition in a state the BJP now governs. Asking BJP MPs to rebel against a Bill their government passed is a public dare, not a private whip. If they refuse, he has the letter on record. If even one of them asks the Centre to reopen the clause on mineral-bearing land, he can say the dare worked.

For households in mining districts the letter names a different cost: pollution, displacement and the daily risk of the pit. Those costs stay in Odisha whether the tax power sits in Bhubaneswar or in New Delhi. The money that is supposed to offset them is what Saturday's argument is about. The MPs now have a number, a date and a request in writing. Their next move will show whether the number travels beyond BJD stationery.