TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
NEW DELHI: Yet another Supreme Court Bench has been constituted to start the continuous hearing of the Goa mining case for three days a week from Tuesday to Thursday from September 17.
Urgency was felt as all mining activities in the State are lying in a standstill for the last 11 months since the apex court issued an injunction on October 5, affecting foreign exchange earnings from iron ore exports and rendering over three lakh people jobless.
The change of the Bench for the second time within a month was necessitated as Justice Ranjan Gogoi, one of the three judges on the new Green Bench, is tied up with the hearing by the five-judge Constitution Bench that may go on for a whole month.
Justice Fakkir Mohammed Ibrahim Kalifulla has been put in his place to get the Green Bench started on hearing the case in which the court had stayed all mining operations in Goa since last October 5.
The Bench continues to be headed by Justice A K Patnaik while the third judge on the Bench is Justice Surinder Singh Nijjar.
This will be the fourth Bench dealing with the Goa mining case as two of the earlier Benches that stayed mining in Goa ~ Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Swatanter Kumar ~ have since retired. Justice Swanter Kumar now heads the National Green Tribunal.
The second Bench headed by Justice T S Thakur and Justices Nijjar and Gogoi had to be changed after Justice Thakur withdrew himself from the case on August 5.
The chief justice constituted yet another Bench headed by Justice Patnaik to hear the case expeditiously, keeping Justices Nijjar and Gogoi on it undisturbed.
The Bench just held one hearing on September 2 and decided to hear the Goa case on priority on daily basis from September 17. It had put a rider that it was subject to availability of Justice Gogoi sitting on the Constitution Bench.
Instead of the case lingering on further, Chief Justice P Sathasivam re-constituted the Bench putting Justice Kalifulla on the Green Bench to kick start the hearing without a delay any more.
