Team Herald
PANJIM: On Monday, Environmentalist and Goa Foundation Director Claude Alvares said that the Supreme Court had already quashed and set aside the second renewal of 88 mining leases and that fresh Environmental Clearances (ECs) will have to be obtained to restart mining operations in the State.
Reacting to Advocate General Devidas Pangam’s statement that ECs obtained in 2006 can be transferred and valid for two years, Alvares said, “The Goa government is not bound by what AG says. The government is bound by what the Supreme Court had stated in its judgment. The Supreme Court had already cancelled all ECs and the direction of the Apex Court is binding on the government.”
In February 2018, the Supreme Court quashed the second renewal of 88 mining leases by the State government to ‘benefit private mining leaseholder’. The Court had said that the government renewed these leases in 2015 with retrospective effect from 2007 just before the Centre amended the Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act, thereby making auction of leases mandatory for mining.
