Pranab asks attorney general to make presentation before GoM on mining issues

Hit by Supreme Court orders on mining related environmental issues, the government has asked attorney general GE Vahanvati to brief a Group of Ministers on coal, mining and environmental issues tomorrow regarding its likely impact on the sector

Updated on: Aug 1, 2011, 23:10:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Hit by Supreme Court orders on mining related environmental issues, the government has asked attorney general GE Vahanvati to brief a Group of Ministers on coal, mining and environmental issues on Tuesday regarding its likely impact on the sector.

The Apex Court orders had stopped mining in Bellary, Karnataka, on grounds of huge environmental degradation and had issued environment ministry to submit report on how much minerals India need for domestic and export purposes.

While approving limestone mining for multi-national Lafarge, the court asked the ministry to set up an independent regulator to impose penalty on polluters and said, henceforth, the principles of National Forest Policy, 1988, should be made applicable in project approval.

The two court orders can have huge implications on environmental rules are enforced in India and the government wants the important GoM headed by finance minister Pranab Mukerjee to understand them before deciding on a new policy for remove environmental hurdles in the mining sector.

Mukerjee asked Vahanvati to make a detailed presentation on the issue before the GoM discusses recommendations of BK Chaturvedi committee on removing environment hurdles for coal sector. The Planning Commission member Chaturvedi had recommended drastic changes in environment laws including review of the environment ministry's go-no -go policy for coal mining in forest areas as it was hampering extraction of minerals.

Chaturvedi, who is also expected to make a presentation at the GoM on Tuesday, had also said sought dilution of the Forest Rights Act in case of mining sector. He wants the condition of two-third quorum to conduct public hearing to be removed for faster issuance of no objection certificate (NOC) for mining. The district administration can issue NOC only after public hearing is conducted.

He, while blaming environment ministry for slow growth rate in coal sector of 5.1% as compared projected 7.8% in the 11th plan, wanted that another impediment to mining Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index (CEPI) not to be made applicable to the sector.

The ministry had vehemently objected to any dilution of environmental laws at the GoM and the new minister Jayanthi Natarajan is expected to pursue the same line. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, in his earlier role as environment minister, had accused the coal sector of inefficiency in not meeting the targets and had said environment ministry was unnecessarily being blamed.

Ramesh in his last few days in the ministry had approved coal mines in the fringe of no go forest areas, which the ministry is expected to depict as part of its flexible approach on mining. But, ministry officials say the recent Supreme Court orders, especially on Lafarge will have be kept in mind while considering any relaxation in rules.

In fact, the court had asked us to make laws more stringent and enforceable, a senior ministry official said, while indicating that the track record of mining sector in reclamation of environment is extremely bad.

One-third of coal mines are running with an environmental violation, no land taken for mining has been returned back to the state governments in last 45 years and there is no systematic time bound reclamation plan of mined out areas.

As a result, forest given to the coal companies were lost for ever.

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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