Umpteen trips have been made to New Delhi by ministers and MPs seeking a solution to the crisis and in December even a three-day sit in was organised in the National Capital by the Goa Mining People’s Front demanding the Centre’s intervention in the issue. Less than a fortnight ago, the mining forum leaders and the local politicians finally met Prime Minister Narendra Modi who assured them of a solution to the issue within the ambit of the law, but had given no time frame for achieving this.
The statement from the government, after the cabinet meeting, comes days after a meeting of the Goa Mining People’s Front attended by 1000 persons had said that the Bharatiya Janata Party had ‘no willingness’ to reach a solution for the resumption of mining, and had even suspected some hidden agenda in this. The meeting had concluded with the decision to work against the BJP in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, a decision that would be unsettling to the party that is hoping to retain the two seats it had won in 2014. For the BJP, that should have been a reason to find a solution, especially since the GMPF went on to say that a government led by the Congress would have had restarted mining activity in the State.
This is a big gamble that is being taken by the BJP. Is it hoping to convince the GMPF that the decision to restart mining stands firmly with the State and not with the Centre, and that the local government has the best interests of the mining affected? If it is unable to reach a solution before the Lok Sabha polls, an explanation such as this may lead the vast majority of the mining persons to withdraw the decision to work against the BJP. But it could work in entirely the opposite way, as the State for the last one year has done little to restart operations in the sector, always urging the Centre to bail it out.
If the State is going to find a solution to the impasse, then the options before the government are auctioning of the leases and forming a corporation to exploit the natural resources present in the soil. The GMPF, on the other hand, is not in favour of either of the options. Their argument is that the surface right of mining leases rest with private owners and not with the government which would make it difficult to auction the mining rights. To circumvent this, if the government were to acquire the land then it will have to pay four times the market rate to land owners. As GMPF sees it, the only solution was an amendment to Goa Concession and Abolishion Act 1987, a suggestion that has been proffered endlessly since February last year.
To this exists the counter argument that the natural resources belong to the people and this too has been stressed throughout the last 12 months. Can the government overlook this argument when it arrives at a solution to this when has so far been elusive? Any decision taken by the government must have the concurrence of the people of the State – all the people of the State – and not just a section of them. Let the option that the government intends to pursue in its bid to restart mining be put before the people and debated, before it is finalised as a decision. While doing so, it cannot desist from recovering the losses from mining, which have still not been collected from the mining lease firms.
