TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
NEW DELHI: The Goa government on Thursday forcefully pleaded before the Supreme Court to lift the ban on iron ore mining which is in place since last one year, pointing out that it has hit 1.5 lakh people, caused revenue loss to the state and is having a cascading effect on the entire economy even as the Advocate General admitted that allowing mines to operate indefinitely under the deemed clause was improper.
Advocate General Atmaram Nadkarni affirmed that the state government has taken measures to prevent any illegal mining that include monitoring of movement of the ore from the pit head to ship and mandatory online display of data on daily production and that the court could at least allow export of some 11 million tonnes of iron ore lying as pit heads that was dug but could not be transported since the Supreme Court clamped the ban on October 5, 2012, on all mining operations. The entire stock can be exported in one to two months, he said, when the Forest Bench headed by Justice A K Patnaik wanted to know the time it would take if the ban is relaxed for allowing export of the already extracted ore.
Earlier counsel for Sesa Goa Mukul Rohtagi had made a similar plea.
On the contentious buffer zone issue, Adv Nadkarni told the court that the draft notification on the eco-sensitive zones has already been submitted to the ministry of environment and forests and the state government is awaiting its approval by the ministry.
State government counsel submitted before the Supreme Court that allowing leases operating on the basis of a deemed extension of leases were an illegal act that was permitted by the previous government.
While not directly conceding that the mines were operating illegally, the Goa government said that in its new policy it had made it clear that the government has to act on applications within three months.
The fate of nearly all the leases that have operated since 2007 on the deemed clause now hangs in balance.
The Goa government informed the court that this habit of allowing mines to operate on deemed extension had been patronized by the earlier government and that the present government had disallowed deemed extension in its new mining policy.
The state government counsel has said for all practical terms it will not accept indeterminate periods for pending applications even while mining goes on. It said the new policy indicated a period of three months within which fate of all leases will be decided. The hearing in the case ceased at lunch break and has been adjourned till next Tuesday as Justice Patnaik was sitting on two other
special Benches in the afternoon.
The other two judges on the Bench were Justices Surinder Singh Nijjar and Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim
Kalifulla.
