Team Herald
NEW DELHI: Goa Foundation on Tuesday urged the K R Rao Committee set up to recommend the new mineral policy to treat minerals like iron ore as family gold to be preserved as “shared inheritance or asset” by the government as trustees for the future generations.
It gave a two-hour presentation to the committee set up by the government on the Supreme Court’s direction in the Odisha mining scam to decide the new policy in place of old 2008 mineral policy. The committee is to submit a draft policy on October 13 to the Centre, which proposes to notify the final policy by December-end. The Apex Court endorsed the demand for an intergenerational equity in the natural resources.
The Goa Foundation deposed before the committee that existing mineral laws and policy are encouraging depletion of the collectively own assets on a phenomenal scale and urged the committee to hear the voice of the people, particularly the tribal community, who have no say in the government policy and decisions on the mining.
“These are the people bearing the brunt of the large number of legal and illegal mines, Goa Foundation’s Claude Alvares told a press conference here after making submissions to the Rao committee.
Its research director Rahul Basu explained the principle of the shared inheritance of future generations in the minerals and other submissions made by the Goa Foundation to the committee, which include conserve the value of minerals; mineral development to include zero waste mining; zero loss mining be an explicit target of the policy; save all mineral receipts, royalty as well as auction premium in future generation funds and distribute from such funds to all the citizens of the state as the common dividend; cap on mining extraction on the environment protection ground and ensure access to minerals and job opportunities to the future generations; best-in class and state of the art controls; radical transparency; active local control over mining and restructuring the mining ministry at the Centre and in states to ensure they actively work to safeguard the shared family assets represented in these minerals.
In 2014, the Goa Foundation won a case in the Supreme Court that declared mining in the state from 2007 to 2012 as fully illegal resulting in an estimated recovery loss of Rs 65,058 crore, which amounts to Rs 4.5 lakh per person in Goa. Instead of making the recoveries, the government was influenced by the mining lobby to hurriedly renew the existing leases before the 2015 amendment in the MMDR Act for mining regulations came into effect requiring auctions and that led to further revenue loss.
of Rs 79,000 crore. Each Goan lost Rs 10 lakh in effect.
