₹1 Lakh Crore Sanctioned for Mining Areas in 11 Years. How Much Has Reached Them?

PMKKKY has sanctioned 4.70 lakh projects worth over ₹1 lakh crore since 2015. Official data and audits show a wide gap between money approved, spent and delivered.

On **17 September 2026**, the Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojana (PMKKKY), the Centre's welfare scheme for mining-affected areas, completed 11 years. The government marked the day with a headline figure: more than **4.70 lakh projects**, worth over **₹1 lakh crore**, sanctioned since the scheme began in 2015.

The idea behind it is simple. Districts that host mines bear the damage, from dust and polluted water to lost farmland, forest and homes, but for decades saw little of the wealth dug out of them. PMKKKY takes a share of mining payments and puts it back into those districts.

The official data, though, contains more than one number. Read together, they tell a more complicated story than the headline.

The money sits with **District Mineral Foundations (DMFs)**, non-profit trusts created by a 2015 amendment to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act. Every company holding a mining lease pays royalty to the state for the minerals it extracts. On top of that, it must pay a contribution to the DMF of the district where it mines: **30% of royalty** for leases granted before 12 January 2015, and **10%** for leases granted on or after that date, most of them through auctions.

The contribution goes straight to the district trust, not through state or central treasuries. DMFs now exist in **656 districts across 23 states**. Each is run by a governing council headed by the district collector, which since 2024 must include local MPs, MLAs and MLCs.

PMKKKY, framed by the Centre in September 2015, is the rulebook for how DMFs spend. States are required to write it into their own DMF rules.

Revised guidelines issued in **January 2024** tightened those rules. At least **70%** of funds must go to "high priority" sectors: drinking water, pollution control, health care, education, welfare of women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities, skill development and livelihoods, sanitation, housing, agriculture and animal husbandry. At most **30%** can go to roads, irrigation, energy and watershed works.

At least 70% of the money must also be spent in "directly affected areas", the villages and panchayats where mining actually happens, rather than the wider district.

The 2024 rules added other safeguards. DMF accounts must now be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). There is a grievance redress system and a state monitoring committee chaired by the chief secretary. Districts must prepare five-year plans based on baseline surveys. Districts collecting ₹10 crore or more a year must keep an endowment fund of up to 10% of annual receipts to sustain livelihoods after mines close. In Scheduled Areas, where many tribal communities live, spending must follow the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution and respect the role of the gram sabha, the village assembly.

On paper, it is a well-designed framework.

The Ministry of Mines' own tables, updated to mid-2026, show what has happened to the money.

**Collected:** ₹1,31,067 crore by June 2026. About ₹49,002 crore came from coal and lignite, ₹65,501 crore from other major minerals such as iron ore and bauxite, and ₹16,564 crore from minor minerals such as sand and stone.

**Sanctioned:** 4,70,020 projects worth about ₹1,09,900 crore by July 2026.

**Completed:** 2,92,156 projects worth ₹49,973 crore. That is 62% of sanctioned projects by number, but only about 45% by value. Small, cheap works appear to finish far more often than big ones.

**Ongoing:** 78,809 projects, with ₹30,512 crore committed.

**Yet to start:** 43,830 projects, with ₹8,105 crore committed.

**Scrapped or cancelled:** 43,589 projects, on which ₹4,582 crore had already been released.

**Spent:** ₹69,884 crore by June 2026.

The simplest test compares money collected with money spent. By mid-2026, DMFs had spent about **53%** of everything they had collected. Roughly **₹61,000 crore** remains unspent.

Nearly one in ten sanctioned projects has been scrapped. That can be sensible, since a plan overtaken by events is better cancelled than finished badly. But ₹4,582 crore already released on cancelled work deserves an explanation that the national tables do not give.

Comparing two official snapshots helps. In November 2024, the government reported ₹1,02,083 crore collected, ₹87,357 crore sanctioned for 3.60 lakh projects, 2.01 lakh projects completed and ₹54,892 crore spent.

Over the roughly 20 months to mid-2026, collections rose by about ₹29,000 crore. Spending rose by about ₹15,000 crore. Put simply, for every ₹2 that came in, about ₹1 went out. The unspent balance grew from roughly ₹47,000 crore to roughly ₹61,000 crore.

Some of this is timing. Large water and health projects take years to plan and build, and districts are told to keep an endowment reserve. But a growing pile of unspent money in some of India's poorest districts is hard to explain away entirely.

There is also a data caveat. The national tables combine figures with different cut-off dates for different states, some of them years old, and the ministry's own footnotes flag missing details. The numbers are the best available, not a precise audit.

The national totals hide sharp differences between states, visible in the ministry's own state-wise table.

**Chhattisgarh** has sanctioned the most projects, about 1.15 lakh, and completed over 83,000 of them, roughly 73%. It reports ₹13,255 crore spent. **Jharkhand** reports about 27,400 completed projects out of 38,300 sanctioned and ₹10,597 crore spent, though it does not report how many are ongoing or cancelled.

Elsewhere the picture is weaker. **Andhra Pradesh** has sanctioned about 32,300 projects but completed fewer than half, and has scrapped around 8,100, one in four. **Gujarat** has scrapped about 6,300 of its 33,900 sanctioned projects. **Karnataka** has completed just over half of its 15,400 sanctioned projects, with ₹3,143 crore spent.

High cancellation rates can point to poor planning at the sanction stage: projects approved without land, technical designs or a department ready to run them. Low completion rates can reflect slow contractors or funds parked with line departments. The national dashboard shows the pattern but not the reasons, which is exactly where state-level audits and district disclosure matter.

A sanctioned project means money has been approved for a purpose: a school building, a water pipeline, a health sub-centre. It does not mean the building stands, the pipe carries water or the clinic has a nurse.

Even "completed" is an administrative label. It records that the works were finished and closed on paper. It does not show whether a water plant still runs two years later, whether a new classroom has a teacher, or whether a health centre has medicines. The 2024 guidelines explicitly say health spending should cover staff, equipment and supplies, not just buildings, because empty buildings were a common complaint.

Government reporting leans on sanctioned and spent figures because they are easier to collect. Checks of whether assets actually work are slower, costlier and far rarer.

Recent CAG audits, the most detailed independent checks so far, show where the gaps lie.

In **Odisha**, the state with the largest DMF collections, the CAG's first audit of the funds, covering 2015–16 to 2023–24, found that six test-checked districts had sanctioned ₹20,948 crore for more than 17,000 projects but used only ₹10,104 crore. In Keonjhar and Sundargarh, two of India's biggest iron-ore districts, ₹983 crore was spent on 9,739 projects in 976 villages that were neither directly nor indirectly affected by mining. Meanwhile, **488 directly affected villages and 96 indirectly affected villages** got no projects at all. In Jajpur, only about 37% of funds used reached directly affected areas, against the 60% the state's rules then required.

In **Chhattisgarh**, a CAG audit tabled in the state assembly on **14 July 2026** found that DMF trusts had received ₹13,101 crore up to 2023–24 and spent ₹10,253 crore. Yet in 11 sampled districts, **754 of 1,734 directly affected villages**, or 44%, got no DMF-funded work. Auditors flagged ₹41.80 crore spent on incomplete or unused assets, including biogas plants and poultry and mushroom centres, ₹30.73 crore on government offices and beautification outside the priority list, and about ₹709 crore on free distribution of items without clearly identified beneficiaries.

An earlier CAG audit in **Jharkhand** found that the state's mining department could not even furnish reliable figures for how much it had collected from leaseholders.

Independent analysts had flagged the same patterns as early as 2018. In Odisha, over a third of the money sanctioned at that point was for roads and bridges, and in Koida, one of Sundargarh's worst-hit mining blocks, about 80% went to large infrastructure. Health care, in districts with severe doctor shortages, received a small fraction of that.

These findings cut across party lines. Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have each been governed by different parties during the scheme's life. The weakness is structural, not partisan.

To the scheme's credit, it has built something that did not exist before 2015: a dedicated, legally protected stream of money for mining districts, worth more than ₹1.3 lakh crore so far. Nearly three lakh projects have been finished. Chhattisgarh alone reports more than 83,000 completed projects and over ₹13,000 crore spent. In many districts, DMF money has paid for water supply, school buildings, hostels and health staff that state budgets had not provided.

The 2024 reforms were also a direct response to the criticisms auditors and researchers had raised: the 70% rules, compulsory CAG audits and a seat for elected representatives. The recent CAG findings are partly a product of that tightening.

But the evidence also shows that money often flows to where it is easiest to spend, not where the damage is greatest. Decisions are concentrated in the collector's office, gram sabhas in tribal areas are often consulted only on paper, and villages beside the mines can be skipped while distant towns gain roads.

The fair conclusion is that PMKKKY's design is sound and its intent genuinely redistributive, while its execution is uneven and under-audited. Both statements hold at once.

**Who pays into the DMF?**

Mining leaseholders, as a fixed share of the royalty they owe: 10% or 30%, depending on when the lease was granted. It is an extra payment on top of royalty, not a cut from state revenue.

**Who decides how the money is spent?**

The DMF governing council in each district, chaired by the collector and including MPs, MLAs and other members. States set the detailed rules, within the PMKKKY framework.

**Can people in mining villages see how their DMF spends money?**

Each DMF is supposed to publish its plans and projects online, and there is a national DMF portal. In practice, disclosure varies widely; some districts publish project-level detail, others very little.

**What happens to the money when mines close?**

The endowment fund, up to 10% of annual receipts in bigger districts, is meant to support livelihoods after mining ends. National data does not yet show whether districts are actually building such reserves.

**The spending ratio.** The share of collected money actually spent, now about 53%. A rising ratio, alongside more completed projects, would show the backlog easing.

**The stalled and scrapped pile.** The 43,830 projects not yet started and the 43,589 cancelled ones. A falling "yet to start" count is a cleaner signal of progress than a rising count of sanctions.

**More CAG audits.** The 2024 rules make CAG audits mandatory. Audits of other major mining states, as they are tabled, will show whether the Odisha and Chhattisgarh findings are exceptions or the norm.

**Action on audit findings.** Whether Odisha and Chhattisgarh redirect money to the villages auditors found were left out, and whether anyone is held responsible for spending in unaffected areas.

**District disclosure.** Whether DMFs publish their five-year plans, baseline surveys and project-level spending online, as the 2024 guidelines require.

**Ground truth.** Independent checks of whether completed water systems, schools and clinics in mining villages are actually working, the one measure no dashboard captures.

₹1 lakh crore sanctioned in 11 years is a genuine policy achievement. India built a funding stream for mining-affected communities where none existed. But the ministry's own figures show that only about ₹50,000 crore worth of sanctioned work has been completed, just over half of all money collected has been spent, and auditors have found hundreds of affected villages with nothing to show for it. The number that matters is not what has been sanctioned, but how much is running today as a working tap, classroom or clinic in a village beside a mine.

**Note on perspective**: {{Based on Ministry of Mines data, the revised PMKKKY guidelines, government statements and CAG audit findings as of 25 September 2026. The analysis credits the scheme's design while focusing on the gap between money sanctioned and benefits delivered.}}