Goa to send ore capping details to environment ministry

Panaji, March 10 (IANS) In a bid to speed up the restarting of Goa's multi-billion-dollar iron ore mining industry, the state government will submit a provisional plan to the union environment and forests ministry listing out the ore extraction limit for every existing mining lease, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said on Tuesday.

Goa will also request union minister Prakash Javadekar to speed up green clearances so that the mining industry, which has been non-operational for more than two years now, is expeditiously restarted, Parsekar told reporters on the sidelines of a film screening.

"We are sending the interim list to the ministry tomorrow (Wednesday)," he said.

Parsekar had met Javadekar during his visit to New Delhi a few days ago.

Mining in Goa was stopped both by the state government as well as the central government in 2012 following a Rs.35,000 crore illegal mining scam unearthed by a judicial commission appointed by the union mines ministry, before the Supreme Court banned all mining activity in the same year.

The ban was eventually lifted last year, but mining still could not be restarted because of pending green clearances.

Parsekar now claims that sending a provisional list of mining leases, with their respective ore extraction or capping limits, would help the ministry speed up granting environment clearances.

"All the extraction limits granted to individual mining leases will not exceed the 20 million metric tonnes ore cap which has been set by the Supreme Court for Goa's mining industry," he said.

Incidentally, while most of the mining leases, from which the Rs.35,000 crore worth illegal iron ore was extracted, have been renewed in favour of the same companies which have been indicted in the scam, even as none of the big mine operators accused of illegal mining in the judicial commission report have been arrested.

Before mining was banned, the state's 90-odd iron ore mines exported more than 55 million metric tonnes of iron ore to China, Japan and other European countries.