PANJIM: On February 7, exactly a year ago, the Supreme Court passed an order quashing and setting aside the second renewals granted to 88 iron ore mining leases in Goa. Mining operations then came to a halt from March 16, 2018, and the government was directed to initiate the process to grant fresh leases at the earliest. The Apex court also ordered the government to take necessary steps to expedite recovery of the amounts due from the mining lease holders.
However, 12-months later, the Goa government has been left red-faced as it has failed to kick off any process to restart iron ore mining operations that serves as a livelihood to nearly three lakhs of Goa’s population and has made no efforts to recover the money that is due.
Directorate of Mines and Geology Department’s (DMG) farce of issuing notices to 12 leaseholders for recovery of Rs 1500 crore in September 2017 has been exposed as till date not a single penny has been received from the erring lessees. Also, a Rs 97 crore demand notice issued to Vedanta Ltd in August last year, has yielded no results.
To add to this, DMG director Prasanna Acharya’s sudden transfer and his replacement with IAS officer Amaya Abhiyankar has raised several eyebrows. While both officers preferred not to comment on the transfer, a highly-placed source said that the “government was not happy with the way Acharya was handling the department”.
“No efforts were made at the departmental level to resume the mining industry and so also to recover the losses. Also, department was not very cooperative with the Special Investigating Team (SIT), probing illegal mining cases. The result was Acharya was shunted out,” sources said.
But, there is another side to this. Departmental sources say that Acharya was made the scapegoat to conceal the government’s overall incompetence in handling the mining crisis, which also resulted in the State losing out revenue of around Rs 3000 crore (government figures). “Director cannot act unless there are directions from the government,” sources said.
The Union Mines Ministry in October 2017, had directed mineral rich States in the country, including Goa, to recover the full value of minerals extracted illegally or without environment clearance, following the Supreme Court verdict in the Odisha illegal mining case. However, no efforts were made by Goa.
Following the 2014 Supreme Court judgments, that had termed the iron ore mining post 2007 as illegal, the government had appointed 15 chartered accountants to undertake a comprehensive audit of lease holders and traders during the inquiry period and to examine the exact quantity of ore extracted, exported, amount of royalty paid, export duty, ore (if any) sourced from other state, etc. The chartered account panel had conducted an audit of 110-115 lease holders but not of the traders as most were fake.
Based on the findings, the government had issued show cause notices to about 12 lease holders in September and October 2012 over recovery of Rs 1500 crore. However, as the government, thereafter did not follow up on the matter, nothing was recovered.
Goa Foundation, the petitioner in Supreme Court in the illegal mining case, had even served notice to Chief Secretary and Mines Secretary demanding that the process to recover losses from the miners be initiated, failing which it had warned to approach the Court. GF has pegged total recovery amount to Rs 65,000 crore from the mine owners for undertaking illegal mining between 2007 and 2012.
