The mining policy should not wait for the coronation of Modi
Manohar Parrikar may well be on the first flight to Delhi on May 17, to prepare to enter the portals of the Delhi Durbar(which as originally held at the Coronation Park in Delhi for the coronation of the King and Queen of England in the 19th century), as a part of the Modi think and action tank. But where will that leave Goa’s governance?
Of course there are many if’s here. Modi needs to become Prime Minister and that is not a given. And then even if Mr Parrikar doesn’t quite take the plunge and move to join the Modi cabinet, it’s clear that big ticket decisions will be completely on hold, the biggest of them being the state’s mining policy, till the new government settles down. His comment on Wednesday, at a press briefing that he would apply his mind on the state mining only after May 30, is worrying. There is a growing unrest among people in the mining areas who have only heard the CM say that economic activity in the mining belt will resume after the monsoons. But the quantum of executive and legal work required for any extraction activity to start in any of the earlier leases, by new lease holders, needs the full attention of the best crisis management team of officers and legal experts. While they should have got to work, the reality, as it always is in Goa, that the application of mind really does happen when the Chief Minister gets down to it. For those who are not aware, mining will automatically restart. But for those who do, it has more stones in its path than a debris ridden bombed street in Syria.
After the Supreme Court order lifting the ban on mining, but cancelling virtually every lease in operation, the government needs to formulate a new mining policy, because the past earlier drafts including new guidelines to mining firms are virtually redundant. The first task of the Government will be to define the term “mineral development” because the Supreme Court has stated that all leases will granted from the point of view of “mineral development”. Now a mining policy which has to be within the ambit of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) MMDR Act, needs to rely on this definition from the MMDR act and the fact is that the MMDR act nowhere, especially under Section 8 (3) will governs renewals, defines “mineral development”.
Meanwhile the state has to implement the process of issuing leases, according to the Supreme Court which has made it explicit that the auction route has to be taken. Yet again the policy needs to determine if auctioned ore can be exported. Added to the twist is that firms wanting to participate in the E tender must register with the Indian Bureau of Mines . Most international steel companies willing to pay higher rates for ore, will not register with the Indian Bureau of Mines.
Most importantly, the government needs to seek clarity on whether lease holders operating on the basis of deemed renewals, who have lost their eases can participate in the fresh allocation of leases. The Court and the petitioner in the Supreme Court case Goa Foundation may well take the view that the CEC report ( in addition to the Supreme Court order) classifies this as illegal mining and therefore the same lease holders cannot be allotted leases. Of course major mining companies who were not the lease holders, on paper, can find a way to get back as raising contractors, (which most actually were), but the state has to address these issues first.
The ruckus that happened in Cavrem on Wednesday and Thursday, where activists opposed the movement of e auctioned ore, was due to the village being highly volatile on mining issues and past incidents of violence between the police and activists. The ore being transported had government sanction and strictly speaking “peoples permission” was not required. However a clear policy and guidelines for transportation would have allowed the government to appease activists and handle the situation much better.
The Goa government must realise that the states’ economy has been pushed back by a decade due the closure of mining. The root cause of this was the total lack of control and governance. To restart mining , it needs governance based on clear policies. This should not be held hostage to the coronation of the Prime Minister of India.
