TEAM HERALD

PANJIM: The dumping of iron ore rejects outside any mining lease area will continue to be illegal in accordance with the Supreme Court order, since the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Ordinance has not dealt with the issue, R Sridharan, Additional Secretary Mines, Government of India, said.

“If the present ordinance has not focused on the dumping issue, then we will have to go with the SC verdict that terms dumping outside lease boundary as illegal,” he told mine owners at a workshop on Friday.

Sridharan was replying to a query from mine owner Shivanand Salgaocar, who requested that necessary amendments be brought in, through appropriate legislation, for permitting dumping of rejects outside the lease area, as was permissible prior to the Supreme Court judgement. “With a view to have systematic and scientific harnessing of the mineral resources, it is imperative that efforts should be made to exploit the minerals to the extent it is possible in any lease hold area having rich mineralization, by not dumping the rejects in such a mineralized zone,” Salgaocar said. “As such dumping of rejects over the mineralized area will lead to abandonment of minable

reserves beneath the dumps,”

he argued.