MUMBAI: Adani Group ’s mining arm in Australia has been fined A$20,000 (Rs 9.6 lakh) by a local court after the company pleaded guilty for giving false and incorrect information on land clearing to the Queensland government.On Thursday, Adani Mining pleaded guilty to charges raised earlier by the Department of Environment and Science that the company had not reported disturbance on a part of land at its mining licence area in its annual return for 2017-18.Responding to the fine imposed by court, the Adani group said there will not be any conviction as it was a case of “self-reporting” to the Queensland government and that it made an “administrative error” in the 2017-18 annual return for the Carmichael mine.“We today (Thursday) pleaded guilty in the Brisbane Magistrate ’s court for providing the administering authority an erroneous document and will pay A$20,000 fine. This is in relation to an administrative error. There was no environmental harm. All relevant works were legal, and fully complied with our project conditions,” Adani Australia said in a response to an ET query.The company faced a fine of up to A$3 million if convicted under the Environmental Protection Act of Australia.After much delay and controversies, the Adani Group started work on its Carmichael coal mine project last year. The mining project in Australia has faced controversies for almost a decade with environmentalists warning of severe damage to the Great Barrier Reef. It received a setback in August 2015 after a federal court in Sydney revoked the environmental clearance given to the project citing that the project threatened two native species. This decision was later reversed by the Australian government which gave it a green nod but imposed more conditions relating to community issues and environmental standards.The projects could not tie up finances amid protests and eventually scaled down the plan to develop the project with an initial investment of A$2 billion to produce 10 million tonne per annum, as against the original plan of investing A$16.5 billion on the Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin to produce 60 million tonnes of thermal coal a year at its peak.“We have made improvements to our procedures to ensure administrative errors of this nature do not occur again in future. We are committed to meeting our performance and compliance reporting obligations, which we take seriously,” the Adani statement said on Thursday.In 2017, the Adani group was fined A$12,000 for a stormwater breach at its Abbot Point coal terminal during Tropical Cyclone Debbie.