Panaji: After turning a blind eye to nearly a decade of unbridled plunder of mineral resources, destruction of environment by the powerful mining industry, both the Goa and the union governments appear to be in competition to ban mining operations here.
However, the new found love of the Manohar Parrikar-led Goa government and Jayanthi Natarajan’s ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) for “banning mines” has not passed muster with the greens here, who claim that beneath all the bluff and bluster, the odds are still in favour the mining companies, nearly every one of which has been nailed in the `350bn scam unearthed by the Justice M B Shah Commission.
A few days after the Shah Commission report was tabled in parliament September 7, it was Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar who fired the first salvo, almost sensationally suspending mining operations across the board in the 90-plus operational mining leases, pending verification of documents.
According to green activist Ramesh Gauns, the order is fraught with dubiousness.
“It bans mining operations, but allows export of already extracted ore, whose source is dubious. And at any rate, mining operations are virtually shut down during the monsoons, so the suspension of operations really means nothing. It’s pulling wool over people’s eyes. If, according to the Shah Commission, all the mining companies are doing illegal mining, then all the ore slated for export could also be illegal,” Gauns said.
Within a week, Jayanthi Natarajan, who was in Goa to articulate the Congress’ clarifications on the `186,000 crore coal allocation scam, tried to upstage Parrikar’s “ban”, by issuing a similar suspension order.
While Parrikar had suspended mining operations, Natarajan on September 12 suspended the environment clearances of the 93 operational iron ore mines in Goa.
“The chief minister of Goa has done an utterly meaningless thing by suspending mining leases. I will now take meaningful action, suspend the environment clearances, study them and only after they (mine owners) satisfy the MoEF (will we) allow them to continue their operations,” said Natarajan, who was not very committal when it came to spelling out the action in store for the guilty ministry officials who had been hauled up by the Shah Commission for issuing clearances without taking into account the ground realities in Goa’s mining belt.
IANS
