Deo orders cancellation of bauxite mining lease in AP

Using his Constitutional powers, Union tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo has directed the Andhra Pradesh government to cancel bauxite mining leases to Andhra Pradesh Mining Development Corporation (APMDC) in the state’s Aaraku valley.

Updated on: Oct 9, 2012, 01:17:35 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Using his Constitutional powers, Union tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo has directed the Andhra Pradesh government to cancel bauxite mining leases to Andhra Pradesh Mining Development Corporation (APMDC) in the state’s Aaraku valley. The step has been taken to prevent reemergence of Naxalism in the valley.

The corporation has signed Memorandum of Understanding with several private companies to mine bauxite, which, according to Deo, is violation of the Alienation of Land Transfer Regulation Act.

The law prohibits a non-tribal either from purchasing any land or even from getting a lease in the scheduled tribe areas.

“Between 2005 and 2010 the government of Andhra Pradesh has signed MoUs with several companies which are neither owned nor controlled by people belonging to the Scheduled Tribes,” Deo said, in his letter to Andhra Pradesh governor ESL Narasimhan, a few months ago.

With the governor not acting on Deo’s request, his ministry has issued the direction to the state government to cancel all mining leases.

“The mining activities in these areas would adversely affect the tribals of these scheduled areas by way of land alienation and dislocation and harassment arising out of loss of habitat and livelihood,” said an order issued by joint secretary in the ministry AK Dubey.

In a separate letter, the minister told Andhra Pradesh chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy that bauxite mining in Visakhapatnam will destroy the sources of three main rivers —Gosthani, Champavati and Sarada, which are also main source of irrigation in the region.

He has support of rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, who has also opposed mining in the tribal areas of Visakhapatnam, which is on the border of naxal affected Orissa.

“I with Deo, would not allow the activity at any cost,” Ramesh had said recently.

Visakhapatnam is also Deo’s parliamentary constituency.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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