No Mining Roadmap
The Navhind Times | April 12, 2019
Goa expected a concrete Proposal from PM Modi
In his Wednesday election speech at Panaji Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to Goans that his next government and the state government will try to “remove the obstacles” on the way of resumption of mining. He did not give any concrete proposal for mining resumption as the mining dependants observing a protest at Jantar Mantar would have expected, though. Perhaps there is no clear way visible to his government yet because of the Supreme Court watching the scene in the light of massive illegal mining in the pre-shutdown years. But Modi gave hope: “We will certainly try to get the hurdles out of the way for restart of mining. The central government and the state government will try to do it in accordance with the law.” Modi’s words might lighten the pessimism of the Goan mining industry and the services industries and the people dependent on it about early restart of mining, but it is not like the light at the end of the tunnel. For the past few years the state leaders have been telling people the same thing what Modi said: “We are trying to remove the hurdles in the way of resumption of mining.” A few months before the announcement of elections, a delegation of the Goa Mining People Front had met the Prime Minister in Delhi and he had said, “I will see what we can do.” Before the BJP manifesto was released, the state BJP leaders told the media they had suggested the manifesto committee to include restart of Goa’s mining as one of the issues. However, the manifesto when it came out did not contain anything about Goa’s mining. All it said about mining was raising national mining output. Read more