PANJIM: The Union Mines Ministry has directed all iron ore mining States, including Goa, to submit a list of cases, wherein the environmental clearance (EC) from Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and Forest Clearance (FC) are pending and hence operations cannot be started.
The State governments have to submit this list at the Union Mines Ministry’s Coordination-cum-Empowered Committee (CEC) meeting scheduled on September 24.
CEC has directed States to list out all such mining lease cases where prior approval has been granted but the mining lease is still not executed and also to furnish a list of mines not working due to want of clearances.
The Goa government, at the CEC meeting in August, had pointed out that obtaining FC for the renewed iron ore mining leases is a big challenge and had sought the Union Mines Ministry’s intervention in getting the necessary clearance from the State Forest Department.
The Forest Department is of the view that no more forest land would be allowed to be diverted for mining activities. Hence it has refused to grant FC to 20 mining leases (two renewed leases).
As such, MoEF has kept the EC of these leases under abeyance, for want of FC from the Chief Wildlife Warden for being located in forest land. There are 20 such cases, however only two have been renewed by Mines Department under Section 8 (3) of the Mines and Minerals Development Regulation Act 1957. The leases were operational (until September 2012) as per the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification 1996 and 2006.
