Goa, Centre in war of words over illegal mining in state

Environment ministry and the Goa government are caught in war of words over the mining mess the state as the Supreme Court hearing in the case nears. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Dec 30, 2012, 23:13:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Environment ministry and the Goa government are caught in war of words over the mining mess the state as the Supreme Court hearing in the case nears.

The Supreme Court in October had banned any mining activity in the state following justice MB Shah report, which found huge illegal mining in the state. The court would be hearing the case on January 17, when the Goan government is expected to rebut the claims on environment ministry on the issue.

"The environment ministry has mislead the court on the issue," Goan chief minister Manohar Parrikar told HT on the sidelines of National Development Council meeting in Delhi. "The ministry cannot put blame on the state government. It was they (the ministry) which gave permission for rampant mining in the state".

Parrikar, who as Leader of Opposition, had used the Right To Information law to obtain information regarding illegal mining in the state and made it an election issue. After winning the assembly elections, he imposed a ban on illegal mining but his attempt to revoke the ban has been stonewalled by the Supreme Court.

He told the NDC that the Central government has to be blamed for the mining mess because of the "haphazard" manner in which the environment ministry has given clearances. Parrikar also said that mining approvals were also given to people who were not involved in mining at all.

Environment ministry had rebutted his claims and said that monitoring the mining approvals is job of the state government, in which it has failed. The ministry officials also said that the state government neither reported the extant of illegal mining not took any action against it till Shah committee submitted its report.

The ministry was also pulled by the National Green Tribunal for "casually" granting environmental clearance for a mining project in reserved forest area in Goa without verifying the information.

The NGT bench of Justice V R Kingaonkar and expert member D K Agrawal quashed the environment clearance (EC) and the forest clearance (FC) granted by the MoEF and the approval of Goa's Chief Warden of Wildlife to mining firm Elray Minerals and Company, saying they were "invalid, illegal and improper."

The Goa government has also objected to the ministry's proposal that all areas within 10 kms of the boundaries of national parks and sanctuaries should be notified as eco-sensitive zones under the Environment Protection Act. "It (the proposal) will virtually remove most of the available land from the purview of development," he 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

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk LIVE and more across India.