Panaji | Aug 13, 2015: Almost 15 months after having lifted the suspension on iron ore mining activities in Goa, the Supreme Court will again hear the illegal mining petition on Friday at which the new cap on annual extraction of ore would be fixed for the State.
The Apex Court appointed six-member expert committee, headed by ecologist Dr C R Babu, to determine the annual cap on iron ore production submitted its report to the Court in April this year, wherein they have raised the annual cap from 20 million tonnes (as proposed by them in their interim report) to 35 million tonnes.
Mines Director Prasanna Acharya will leave for Delhi on Wednesday for the hearing. Sources said the committee report will be examined by the Apex Court and copies would be made available to the petitioner and all respondents.
The committee members include ecologist Dr C R Babu, geologist Dr S C Dhiman, mineralogist Prof B K Mishra, Forest officer S Parmeshwarappa and the Goa secretary Parimal Rai.
Following Justice M B Shah Commission’s inquiry report into illegal mining in Goa, NGO Goa Foundation had approached the Supreme Court in October 2012, based on which the Court had banned mining operations in the State. On April 21, 2014 the Supreme Court had lifted the ban imposing certain conditions for sustainable mining activities.
The Supreme Court, however, termed mining from 2007-12 as illegal stating that MMDR does not favour ‘deemed’ mining provision and directed State to allocate mining leases afresh.
Following the lifting of the ban, the government renewed 89 mining leases under Section 8(3) of the MMDR Act. However, the renewals have come under the scanner of the Accountant General of Goa.
The Union Ministry of Environment and Forest also lifted the abeyance on the environment clearances in the case of 72 mining leases.
(Source: http://goacom.com/)
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