Team Herald
NEW DELHI: The Goa government’s review petitions against the Supreme Court’s judgment shutting down all iron ore mines in the State since March 2018 have come on board for examination on January 21.
All four review petitions filed on November 19 and 20 last year, as also four review petitions of Vedanta filed this year, have been clubbed together for hearing in a detailed order passed by the Bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud, Indu Malhotra and Indira Banerjee on Monday, while deferring the hearing of Vedanta Limited’s case to February 4.
The order says: “Let the review petitions be circulated in Chambers on 21 January 2021.” The review petitions are usually examined in the chamber and the judgment is pronounced without allowing the lawyers of the parties to argue.
The State government’s petitions challenge the judgment passed by a 2-judge Bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta on February 7, 2018, quashing renewal of all 88 mining leases.
The government and Vedanta Limited have made Goa Foundation, Rama Ladu Velip and Sudip N Tamankar as respondents as their petitions resulted in the order shutting down Goa’s mines for the second time.
State Advocate General Devidas Pangam did not press for an early hearing of the review petitions for months and then tried to get it heard by the Bench of Chief Justice of India Sharad Arvind Bobde. Since the Goa mining cases were already heard by a bench headed by Justice Chandrachud, the CJI preferred to refer the review petitions also to him for a decision.
In the meantime, Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant kept making trips to Delhi for the Centre to issue an ordinance or enact a law to revive leases of the mining firms instead of following the directive of the Apex Court to conduct fresh auction of the mines.
It was, however, only after a discussion with Union Minister of Mines Pralhad Joshi during the last Delhi trip of the Chief Minister as to the avoidance of the Apex Court order to go for an auction that the Advocate General was asked to press for the review by the court. Joshi has made it clear that the Centre will not bring any law in defiance of the top court’s judgment.
