PANJIM: The BJP legislators on Tuesday extended their support to Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant’s plan to form Mining Corporation to restart the iron ore activities in the State.
During party legislators meet, the MLAs stressed on the need to restart mining activities at the earliest to improve the crumbling financial situation of the State. The legislators echoed government’s plan to set up Mining Corporation under Chief Minister, for this purpose.
“We all want mining activities to restart at the earliest. I have held discussion with MLAs to seek their views on how to restart the activities. All options are open before the government and setting up Mining Corporation is one amongst them,” Chief Minister told media persons post meeting.
The State government has last month filed a review petition in Supreme Court challenging its order dated February 7, 2018 banning mining activities in the State.
Though the experts as well as mining dependents are against forming corporation as it is lengthy process involving multiple problems, government is looking at the Corporation to initiate dump auction process.
Speaking earlier, Minister for Ports Michael Lobo said that he is confident that by January, government will take a final call on forming the Corporation, which is the only option left, to restart mining activities.
“During the meeting, the lack of development due to financial crunch was discussed. We requested Chief Minister to take some immediate steps to improve the financial position. And restarting mining activities by auctioning dumps is the first option, for which we have to set up the Corporation,” Lobo said.
He said that the legislators have extended full support to Chief Minister to go ahead with formation of the Corporation.
“Once the Corporation is set up, we can immediately take up dump auction. It will help government to get nothing less than Rs 1,500 crore,” Minister said adding that Corporation can later look into the extraction of ore activities.
Nearly 750 million tons of dumps are identified by the government.
Lobo said that if Supreme Court decision on the review petition does not come at the earliest, then we need to be prepared with second option.
Meanwhile, Goa Mining People’s Front President Puti Gaonkar said setting up corporation for resuming the mining activities “does not seem to be a feasible solution”.
He said that State run corporations don’t have required expertise to conduct mining activity, which has been traditionally held by mine owners.
