Jaipur | Jun 02, 2016: The Rajasthan government has sought help from Centre over the issue of environmental clearance (EC). Two ministers from the state, Kiran Maheshwari and Rajkumar Rinwa met Union minister for forest and environment Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday and asked him to intervene in the matter.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had ordered shutdown of all mines in the state which do not obtain environmental clearance by May 31. It has affected more than 30,000 mines in the state. To break the deadlock, government sent its two ministers to find solution with the Central government.
In their meeting with the Javedkar, the ministers presented the Rajasthan's stand. They said that nearly 33,000 mines in the state provides raw material for the construction across the country and at the same time provide employment to lakhs of people. They asked Centre to help in getting the ECs for these mines.
State approached the Union government after it exhausted all of its option to keep these mines running. "There is no way out as SC has already refused to put stay on orders while NGT has been extending deadline for past three years now," said an official of mines department.
Department claims that it lacks the manpower to provide EC to so many mines in such duration. It is facing challenges of other sorts. It vocally demanded the setting up of district level committees but has opposed linking it to limitations in mining area from these committees.
"We have negligible mines that come under individual leases of 0-5 hectares or 6-25 hectares for cluster mines. We suggested not putting any limit for the district authority as it will not solve our purpose. Areas like Balesar, Udaipur, Rajsamand have small mines but when put together they stretched to more than 100 hectares," said an official of the mines department.
(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)