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The above process is such as has been described by the appellant. The correctness of the description has not been disputed by the respondents. The High Court has also upheld the process to be such as described by the appellant and proceeded to construct its judgment based thereon. The correctness of the above description is not disputed before us too.

The submission of the appellant is that in the process of mining, the iron ore is extracted and separated into ore lumps, fines and waste material which is generally referred to and known as "slime". "Slime" is not iron ore within the meaning of the provisions of the Act and the Second Schedule. It has no utility, much less as a mineral. It is only dumped. The slime is the resultant waste material from the wet screening process undertaken for segregation of lumps and fines. Slimes consist of impurities and minute particles with ferrous content but the ferrous part can neither be retrieved nor utilized for production of iron/steel as no technology for the said purpose is yet developed. Therefore, till today, it is submitted on behalf of the appellant, no other State in the country is collecting royalty on slimes. It is only the State of Madhya Pradesh which has initiated the process of seeking to levy royalty on slimes. Such action of the State is arbitrary and unreasonable as slimes are nothing but impurities left available to be discarded at the end of the process of production of iron ore lumps and iron ore fines. In view of the provisions contained in Section 9 and Entry 23 of the Second Schedule, both read together, the State cannot claim to levy royalty on slimes and hence the action of the State is liable to be struck down.

Ore with a low sulfur content are more suitable for smelting. Formerly, only ores containing more than 30 percent iron could be smelted profitably, but because of various upgrading processes lower grade ores can now be used. The value of an ore deposit depends on geographic location and accessibility.
Upgrading ores (beneficiation). As the high-grade deposits became more inaccessible or exhausted and as shipping costs increased, it became necessary to separate and discard unusable materials from the iron ores at, or near, the mines. Processes broadly termed beneficiation were developed to upgrade the ore before shipment. Concentration or other preparation of ores is accomplished by leaching and drying, flotation, agglomeration, or magnetic separation. Flotation is an ore-dressing process by which finely pulverized ore is agitated in a mixture of oil and water. Constituent minerals are separated from one another by virtue of their respective abilities to be wetted by water and by their specific gravities."

There can be no manner of doubt that the entire material extracted from the earth, so far as iron ore mines are concerned, has to be subjected to a process for the purpose of wining iron therefrom. The process results into (i) lumps, (ii) fines and (iii) slimes. Section 9 of the Act obliges the holder of a mining lease to pay royalty in respect of any mineral removed or consumed from the leased area. If only it would have been the question of considering Section 9 and determining the impact thereof, may be it is the total quantity of mineral removed from the leased area or consumed in the beneficiation process which would have been liable for payment of royalty and that quantity may have included the quantity of slimes as well, as was held by this Court in State of Orissa Vs. Steel Authority of India Ltd. (supra). But in case of iron ore the process of beneficiation involves introduction of catalytic agents leading to separation and generation of waste consisting of impurities which the scheme of the Act has left out from charging.

It is clear that in iron ore production the run of mine (ROM) is in a very crude form. A lot of waste material called 'impurities' accompanies the iron ore. The ore has to be upgraded. Upgrading the ores is called "beneficiation". That saves the cost of transportation. Different processes have been developed by science and technology and accepted and adopted in different iron ore projects for the purpose of beneficiation. In the processes, a stage is reached which yields concentrates. They are treated in the concentrate plant by resort to physical, chemical and/or electrical methods. The valuable constituents are retained and what is discarded as 'tailings' or 'slimes' is something of no commercial value, being just impurities consisting of unusable materials. Concentrates is not necessarily a stage reached in all the processes. Concentrates consist of enriched ore segregated from waste in concentration plant. It is a substance of intensified strength having been purified by removal of valueless mud, slurry, impurities and waste. Wet processing (at a stage after fines have already been won) separates extremely fine particles, grains or fragments of ore which are too poor to be treated any further and have to be flown for being consigned to tail ponds as waste separated from concentrates. From concentrates iron can yet be won. Concentrates differ from slimes which are to be found as such not in concentration plant but only in tail pond. What reaches tailings dam or pond is slurry. Solid particles are deposited and clean water overflows. This processing is done to prevent pollution and to protect environment. There are ferrous contents in the slurry but that is a total waste. Inasmuch as, and undisputedly, by any process or technique known to science and technology till this date, winning of ferrous contents from out of the slurry is commercially unviable. The slimes are accepted by the mother Earth once again to be dissolved in its womb.