BHUBANESWAR | Aug 08, 2017: The Supreme Court’s landmark order imposing an estimated Rs 25,000 crore penalty on iron ore and manganese miners in Odisha continues to rattle the sector, with serious implications for mining operations across the country and clearances obtained in the past.
The 144-page order has given ammunition to green activists to seek court orders against mines in Goa and other states, and strengthened their case in ongoing matters in various courts and tribunals, experts said.
Industry is worried. “The Supreme Court order in the case of Odisha will not only have repercussions for mining across the country, but coal mines operating without environment clearances and industries operating with clearances obtained under the 1994 Environment Impact Assessment notification,” said RK Sharma, Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries.
The Centre is evaluating the impact. “We are studying the order," Secretary Mines Arun Kumar said.
Environmentalists and policymakers say the order will have a wider fallout because of some clarifications the court has given on clearances, which would place thousands of entities across sectors on the wrong side of the law from at least 2010 onwards. These clarifications relate to conditions under which environment clearances (EC) are required and the environmental impact assessments notifications (EIA) of the environment ministry.
The court’s clarification on what constitutes illegal mining has prompted environmental action group Goa Foundation to plan moving court seeking recovery of all ore sold from mines in Goa. It will first push for environmental clearances to mines of a dozen companies, including Sesa Goa, Chowgule & Co, EMCO Goa, and the Fomento group declared invalid.
The Supreme Court’s order in the ‘Common Cause Vs Union of India’ had ruled that abiding by environmental laws is prerequisite to mining, and approvals cannot be retrospective. A violation of the Environmental Protection Act of 1986, or any pollution control laws, would thus count as “illegal mining” under the Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 governing mining.
Last year, the Jharkhand government had issued recovery notices to 15 lessees adding up to Rs 7,598 crore, which was legally stayed but experts say fresh notices may be issued. The state’s Mines Commissioner Aboobacker Siddique P told ET his government was studying the order.
Claude Alvares, director of the Goa Foundation, told ET he expected other environmentalists to fight for the implementation of this verdict. He said he plans to place before the National Green Tribunal’s Pune bench the court’s clarification on the EIA notification of 1994 (EIA 94) and 2006. The bench is hearing a matter, in which Goa Foundation is a co-petitioner, dealing with validity of clearances granted under EIA 94 to 24 mines in the state. The matter stems from the case of MS Talaulicar & Sons disposed by the Supreme Court in July last year.
During the hearing of Odisha matter, mining firms had argued that EIA 94 was “uncertain and ambiguous” requiring the MoEF to issue several clarifications. The Supreme Court clarified the issue in its order in the MC Mehta case. It said a fresh EC was required for increase in production, not just area -- and the two ministry circulars of Oct 28, 2004 and April 25, 2005 that had followed.
The “possibility of getting an ex post facto EC was a signal to mining lease holders that obtaining an EC was not mandatory or that if it was not obtained, the default was retrospectively condonable,” the court was told.
The Supreme Court disagreed. “It appears to us that the MoEF was, in a sense, cajoling the mining lease holders to comply with the law and EIA 1994 rather than use the stick. That the mining lease holders chose to misconstrue the soft implementation as a licence to not abide by the requirements of the law is unfortunate and was an act of omission or commission by them at their own peril,” it said. “That the MoEF took a soft approach cannot be an escapist excuse for non-compliance with the law or EIA 94,” it added.
It also clarified that clearances granted under the EIA 94 were for a sanctioned fixed volume, to be extracted from a specified site, and for a period of five years. Industries across sectors continue to operate on ECs granted under EIA 94 on the presumption that they remained valid after the 2006 notification dropped the “five years”
(Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/)