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Row over public hearing for Goa’s iron ore mining blocks, activists cry foul
The Goa Foundation has termed the public hearing as “illegal”, claiming misrepresentations in the environment impact assessment report
A public hearing for environmental clearance of an iron ore mining block in Goa is expected to take off on a stormy note on Friday as the state seeks to restart its mining industry which has been shut for more than a decade.
The Goa State Pollution Control Board will conduct the public hearing, the first of presumably many, for the Bicholim mineral block (Block I) with an area of 478.5206 hectare located in north Goa and covering the villages of Bicholim, Bordem, Lamgao, Mulgao, Mayem, and Sirigao.
The rights to the mining block were won by Vedanta Ltd in the auctions held in December last year and if restarted, will mark the resumption of operations at the site of the existing mine.
However, voices of dissent have been getting louder in the run up to the public hearing.
“This is a mine covering six villages, yet the state government hasn’t taken the trouble to explain the technical language in the environmental impact assessment report. They want to force this through without the villagers understanding the impacts of the mining,” Swapnesh Sherlekar, a Bicholim resident and an activist, said.
“Mining has ruined our once fertile fields, destroyed the springs that provided us with water, and all this has happened in just the last 50 years. This existing mine is now being given a fresh lease of another 50 years, so imagine the kind of destruction that will take place in the next 50 years,” Sakharam Pednekar of the villagers’ union said.
The Goa Foundation has termed the public hearing as “illegal”, claiming misrepresentations in the environment impact assessment report.
“Our main objection is that the mining block has been shown as a fresh lease, just commencing production, when the mining lease has been under continuous operation since 1941. A brownfield site has been declared as a greenfield project. This has been done to ensure that the environmental problems caused by these leases during several decades of poor-quality mining practices are simply not brought up for discussion. Neither is there any proposal for rehabilitation of the mine sites and damage done,” Goa Foundation’s Claude Alvares said.
The village panchayat of Mulgao has called for a cancellation of the public hearing, saying that the villagers were not given enough time to understand the report and create awareness about it.
North Goa Superintendent of Police Nidhin Valsan said the police have made all arrangements for the smooth conduct of the hearing in coordination with district administration officials.
The Bicholim mining block consists of five erstwhile leases that have been amalgamated into a single block. The leases have been in operation since 1941 and have been operated by several companies including Dempo Mining Corporation (since taken over by Vedanta) and Sesa Mining Corporation Ltd, which later became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vedanta Ltd.
Vedanta bagged the block by promising to share 63.55% of the average sale price with the state government. The block has a stated capacity of 3.0 MPTA (million tons per annum) of iron ore.
The mining industry in Goa is estimated to have contributed roughly around ₹6,500 crore or 16.94% to the state GDP and employed 19,000 employees directly out of the total labour force of 582,000 prior to its stoppage by the state government in the wake of the Shah Commission report on illegal mining tabled in Parliament in 2012.
