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PANJIM: Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, accused the Supreme Court appointed Centrally Empowered Committee (CEC) of being biased, saying that the state in its affidavit due to be filed in the apex court could appoint a monitoring officer, if it so wishes, to monitor the state government’s action against illegal mining.
“We have put an action plan before the Supreme Court that unless each thing is checked, it (mining activity) shall not be allowed. We have also said that if they want they can appoint a monitoring person, but let the state government decide (on what action is to be taken)”, he said. “But not the current CEC. For two reasons, the first is that it is headed by a former chief secretary of the state and the second is that he’s a biased man”, he claimed.
The CEC constituted by the Supreme Court of India on May 9, 2002 is headed by former Secretary of Union Ministry of Environment and Forests Secretary, Goa from March 1988 to March 1992, P V Jayakrishnan. It has as its members M K Jiwrajka, Mahendra Vyas, M K Muthoo, S K Patnaik, and P J Dilip Kumar, director general of forests.
The CEC’s broad task is to monitor, advise and ensure compliance of the orders of the Supreme Court concerning the subject matter of forests and wildlife and other issues arising out of the order constituting the committee. The CEC in the last nine years had dealt with a number of cases involving illegal mining in Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Orissa Karnataka and now Goa.
The chief minister, who is also the mines minister attacked the CEC’s comments that illegal mining in Goa is much bigger than that of Karnataka, saying it indicates the CEC’s prejudice.
It may be recalled that the apex court, acting on the allegations contained in the writ petition filed by Samaj Parivartana Samudaya had asked the CEC to inspect the mines in Karnataka and submit a report.
In its report, the CEC had stated that from 2003-04 to 2009-10, 304.91 lakh metric tonnes of iron ore had been exported, allegedly without valid permits. Also a further 71.28 lakh metric tonnes was apparently illegally exported in 2009-10 alone and according to the report: “At a conservative rate of Rs. 5,000 per tonne, the nominal value of the illegally-exported iron ore from Karnataka comes to Rs. 15,245 crore.”
The CEC in its Karnataka report said that in the last nine years it had dealt a number of cases involving illegal mining but compared to Karnataka all these cases pale into insignificance particularly in Bellary district and this with the active connivance of department officials concerned and also public representatives.
