The Mines Act, 1952

(1)This Act may be called the Mines Act, 1952. (2) It extends to the whole of India 1* * * (3) It shall come into force on such date2or dates as the Central Government may, by notificationin the Official Gazette, appoint, and different dates may be appointed for different provisions of thisAct and for different States but not later than 3lst December, 1953.

1[(1)] In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,-- 2* * * * * (b) "adult" means a person who has completed his eighteenth year; 3[(c) "agent", when used in relation to a mine, means every person, whether appointed as suchor not, who, acting or purporting to act on behalf of the owner, takes part in the management,control, supervision or direction of the mine or of any part thereof;] (d) Chief Inspector means the Chief Inspector of Mines appointed under this Act; 4[(e) "Committee" means a committee constituted under section 12;] (f) "day" means a period of twenty-four hours beginning at midnight; (g) "district magistrate" means, in a presidency-town, the person appointed by the CentralGovernment to perform the duties of a district magistrate under this Act in that town; 5[(h) a person is said to be "employed" in a mine who works as the manager or who worksunder appointment by the owner, agent or manager of the mine or with the knowledge of themanager, whether for wages or not-- (i) in any mining operation (including the concomitant operations of handling andtransport of minerals up to the point of despatch and of gathering sand and transport thereof tothe mine); (ii) in operations or services relating to the development of the mine includingconstruction of plan therein but excluding construction of buildings, roads, wells and anybuilding work not directly connected with any existing or future mining operations; (iii) in operating, servicing, maintaining or repairing any part of any machinery used in orabout the mine; (iv) in operations, within the premises of the mine, of loading for despatch of minerals; (v) in any office of the mine; (vi) in any welfare, health, sanitary or conservancy, services required to be providedunder this Act, or watch and ward, within the premises of the mine excluding residential area;or (vii) in any kind of work whatsoever which is preparatory or incidental to, or connectedwith, mining operations;] (i) "Inspector" means an Inspector of Mines appointed under this Act, and includes a districtmagistrate when exercising any power or performing any duty of an Inspector which he isempowered by this Act to exercise or perform; 6* * * * * 7[(j) "mine" means any excavation where any operation for the purpose of searching for orobtaining minerals has been or is being carried on and includes-- (i) all borings, bore holes, oil wells and accessory crude conditioning plants, including thepipe conveying mineral oil within the oilfields; (ii) all shafts, in or adjacent to and belonging to a mine, whether in the course of beingsunk or not; (iii) all levels and inclined planes in the course of being driven; (iv) all open cast workings; (v) all conveyors or aerial rope ways provided for the bringing into or removal from amine of minerals or other articles or for the removal of refuse therefrom; (vi) all adits, levels, planes, machinery, works, railways, tramways and sidings in oradjacent to and belonging to a mine; (vii) all protective works being carried out in or adjacent to a mine; (viii) all workshops and stores situated within the precincts of a mine and under the samemanagement and used primarily for the purposes connected with that mine or a number ofmines under the same management; (ix) all power stations, transformer sub-stations, convertor stations, rectifier stations andaccumulator storage stations for supplying electricity solely or mainly for the purpose ofworking the mine or a number of mines under the same management; (x) any premises for the time being used for depositing sand or other material for use in amine or for depositing refuse from a mine or in which any operations in connection with suchsand, refuse or other material is being carried on, being premises exclusively occupied by theowner of the mine; (xi) any premises in or adjacent to and belonging to a mine on which any processancillary to the getting, dressing or preparation for sale of minerals or of coke is being carriedon;] (jj) "minerals" means all substances which can be obtained from the earth by mining, digging,drilling, dredging, hydraulicing, quarrying or by any other operation and includes mineral oils(which in turn include natural gas and petroleum); 8* * * * * (k) "office of the mine" means an office at the surface of the mine concerned; 9[(kk) "open cast working" means a quarry, that is to say, an excavation where any operationfor the purpose of searching for or obtaining minerals has been or is being carried on, not being ashaft or an excavation which extends below superjacent ground;] (l) "owner", when used in relation to a mine, means any person who is the immediateproprietor or lessee or occupier of the mine or of any part thereof and in the case of a mine thebusiness whereof is being carried on by a liquidator or receiver, such liquidator or receiver10***but does not include a person who merely receives a royalty, rent or fine from the mine, or ismerely the proprietor of the mine, subject to any lease, grant or licence for the working thereof, oris merely the owner of the soil and not interested in the minerals of the mine; but 11[any contractoror sub-lessee] for the working of a mine or any part thereof shall be subject to this Act in likemanner as if he were an owner, but not so as to exempt the owner from any liability; (m) "prescribed" means prescribed by rules, regulations or bye-laws, as the case may be; 12[(n) "qualified medical practitioner" means a medical practitioner who possesses anyrecognised medical qualification as defined in clause (h) of section 2 of the Indian MedicalCouncil Act, 1956 (102 of 1956) and who is enrolled on a State medical register as defined inclause (k) of that section;] (o) "regulations", "rules" and "bye-laws" mean respectively regulations, rules and bye-lawsmade under this Act; (p) where work of the same kind is carried out by two or more sets of persons working duringdifferent periods of the day each of such sets is called a "relay"13[and each of such periods is calleda "shift"]; 14[(pp) "reportable injury" means any injury other than a serious bodily injury which involves,or in all probability will involve, the enforced absence of the injured person from work for aperiod of seventy-two hours or more;] 15[(q) "serious bodily injury" means any injury which involves, or in all probability willinvolve, the permanent loss of any part or section of a body or the use of any part or section of abody, or the permanent loss of or injury to the sight or hearing or any permanent physicalincapacity or the fracture of any bone or one or more joints or bones of any phalanges of hand orfoot; (r) "week" means a period of seven days beginning at midnight on Saturday night or suchother night as may be approved in writing for a particular area by the Chief Inspector or anInspector.] 16[(2) A person working or employed in or in connection with a mine is said to be working oremployed-- (a) "below ground" if he is working or employed-- (i) in a shaft which has been or is in the course of being sunk; or (ii) in any excavation which extends below superjacent ground; and (b) "above ground" if he is working in an open cast working or in any other manner notspecified in clause (a)].

1[3. Act not to apply in certain cases.--(1) The provisions of this Act, except those contained in2[sections 7,8,9,40,45 and 46] shall not apply to-- (a) any mine or part thereof in which excavation is being made for prospecting purposes onlyand not for the purpose of obtaining minerals for use or sale: Provided that-- (i) not more than twenty persons are employed on any one day in connection with anysuch excavation; (ii) the depth of the excavation measured from its highest to its lowest point nowhereexceeds six metres or, in the case of an excavation for coal, fifteen metres; and (iii) no part of such excavation extends below superjacent ground; or (b) any mine engaged in the extraction of kankar, murrum, laterite, boulder, gravel, shingle,ordinary sand (excluding moulding sand, glass sand and other mineral sands), ordinary clay(excluding kaolin, china clay, white clay or fire clay), building stone, 3[slate], road metal, earth,fullers earth, 3[, marl, chalk] and lime stone: Provided that-- (i) the workings do not extend below superjacent ground; or (ii) where it is an open cast working-- (a) the depth of the excavation measured from its highest to its lowest point nowhereexceeds six metres; (b) the number of persons employed on any one day does not exceed fifty; and (c) explosives are not used in connection with the excavation. (2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1), the Central Government may, if it issatisfied that, having regard to the circumstances obtaining in relation to a mine or part thereof orgroup or class of mines, it is necessary or desirable so to do, by notification in the Official Gazette,declare that any of the provisions of this Act, not set out in sub-section (1), shall apply to any suchmine or part thereof or group or class of mines or any class of persons employed therein. (3) Without prejudice to the provisions contained in sub-section (2), if at any time any of theconditions specified in the proviso to clause (a) or clause (b) of sub-section (1) is not fulfilled inrelation to any mine referred to in that sub-section, the provisions of this Act notset out insub-section (1), shall become immediately applicable, and it shall be the duty of the owner, agent ormanager of the mine to inform the prescribed authority in the prescribed manner and within theprescribed time about the non-fulfilment.]

In this Act, references to time of day are references to Indianstandard time, being five and a half hours ahead of Greenwich mean time: Provided that, for any area in which Indian standard time is not ordinarily observed, the CentralGovernment may make rules-- (a) specifying the area; (b) defining the local mean time ordinarily observed therein; and (c) permitting such time to be observed in all or any of the mines situated in the area.

(1)The Central Government may, by notification in theOfficial Gazette, appoint such a person as possesses the prescribed qualifications to be Chief Inspectorof Mines for all the territories to which this Act extends and such persons as possess the prescribedqualifications to be Inspectors of Mines subordinate to the Chief Inspector. (2) No person shall be appointed to be Chief Inspector or an Inspector, or having been appointedshall continue to hold such office, who is or becomes directly or indirectly interested in any mine ormining rights in India. (3) The district magistrate may exercise the powers and perform the duties of an Inspector subjectto the general or special orders of the Central Government: Provided that nothing in this sub-section shall be deemed to empower a district magistrate toexercise any of the powers conferred by 1[section 22 or section 22A] or section 61. (4)The Chief Inspector and all Inspectors shall be deemed to be public servants within themeaning of the Indian Penal Code (45 of 1860).