Within hours of taking over as Chief Minister in 2012, Mr Parrikar asked a common acquaintance to give Claude Alvares a call. After the pleasantries were over, Alvares told Mr Parrikar, “I’m very happy that you are back in power. This time I hope you remain CM for ten years”. The Chief Minister thanked him and requested that he (Claude) continue to send him information and documents on mining illegalities, which Alvares did for some time. When he soon realized that not much was coming out of it, he directed those documents to the Director of Mines.
In this lies a tale of early trust and cooperation between Mr Parrikar and the man they now label as the villain of livelihood, Claude Alvares. It was the same Mr Parrikar who relied more than a fair bit, on information and documents supplied by this same anti-livelihood villain, who spoke the same language as Mr Parrikar did, as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee on mining. While this PAC report was not tabled in the House because the Congress MLAs on the PAC, Agnelo Fernandes, Victoria Fernandes and Francis Silveira questioned the report and refused to sign it, citing that the report was prepared without their confidence, it was for practical purposes Parrikar’s report, which severely indicted the then Digambar Kamat government for gross illegal mining. Is it any wonder that the Congress MLAs did not sign on the PAC report? The BJP did not question the source of funds of the Goa Foundation or Claude Alvares, then. No one questioned his source of funds then. Manohar Parrikar as PAC Chairman did get a lot of inputs from him then. And the PAC findings echoed what the Goa Foundation’s funding had revealed. It found that almost half of the active iron ore mines in the state were illegal and have caused an estimated loss of Rs 3,000 crore to the exchequer since 2005.
It revealed that thirty-two of the 54 working iron ore mines in forest areas did not have the mandatory clearances under conservation laws.
It mentioned that nearly 1.4 lakh trees were cleared to make way for mines in forest areas
Mr Parrikar himself made this statement “We have found that around 15 million tons of iron ore were extracted and exported from Goa illegally over last six years.
The mining eco-system hasn’t changed at all since then. While there is a mining policy in place, it is the same set of players whose leases have been renewed. Important studies commissioned to check the veracity of Environmental Clearances, conducted by people of eminence like Professor Madhav Gadgil are gathering dust. He had said that almost all the EC’s granted are illegal.
Over the years, the BJP which came to power simply wore the hat of the erstwhile Congress and protected the same perpetrators of illegal mining who the Congress did. Therefore Claude Alvares has turned from friend to foe and stands in the way of the government giving an extra lease of life to those who committed illegalities, in the garb of regularizing the mining ecosystem.
In doing so, its hypocrisy stands out.
