Mining scam: MoEF to set up committee of experts

Environment ministry will set up an expert committee to find out the mining companies, including in coal sector, who have failed to start mining despite getting environment clearances and to strengthen the ministry's monitoring process.

Updated on: Sep 16, 2012, 12:54:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Environment ministry will set up an expert committee to find out the mining companies, including in coal sector, who have failed to start mining despite getting environment clearances and to strengthen the ministry's monitoring process.

The ministry has given environment clearance to 530 million tonnes to coal but operations to mine only 200 million has started.

Many companies have failed to start mining despite getting the clearance years ago. There is a stipulated time frame within which the operation has to be initiated.

"There will no more clearances for the coal sector unless the existing approvals are utilised," a senior ministry functionary said.

"Mining clearances will also be reviewed".

The committee, ministry officials, said would also look into ways the mining potential for which the clearances have been granted is utilized to its maximum.

"It will also suggest ways to improve environment clearance process to avoid mining scams like the one in Goa," a senior ministry official said.

Justice MB Shah panel had in his report to the government alleged that the environment ministry had issued environment clearances to the projects on basis of wrong information provided by the state government.

Although environment ministry believes that such a conclusion was reached without consulting it, environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan has asked her officials to review all environmental clearances issued to the mining sector in Goa.

"If we receive complaints from other states we will look into it," the minister told HT.

The committee will start its work by reviewing mining clearance given in Goa and the poor monitoring resulting in illegal mining to the scale of Rs 35,000 crore. It will then examine mining clearances given in other states.

The committee will also study the approval and monitoring processes adopted by the state governments, which enforce the conditions stipulated with the approvals given, officials said.

The committee would be asked make recommendations on improving ministry's monitoring mechanism to check environment violations.

To improve its monitoring mechanism, the ministry has also decided to increase the number of its regional offices from four to six. The ministry will also be seeking more manpower for its regional offices to improve monitoring.

"Civil society and locals will also be key for the new monitoring mechanism," officials said.

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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