Category: Mining

Odisha Sun Times | April 17, 2019

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought response from the Centre, Odisha, Karnataka and the CBI on a PIL seeking cancellation of 358 iron ore mining leases which were allocated or their duration extended without any fresh evaluation and adopting the due auction process.

Also seeking response on the plea for quashing of Section 8A of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, the bench of Justice S.A. Bobde and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer appointed senior counsel P.S. Narasimha as amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter.

The PIL says that the Section 8A of the MMDR Act, 1957, which provides for grant of a mining lease for minerals other than coal, lignite and atomic minerals, is “illegal, arbitrary and unconstitutional”. Read more

Down To Earth | April 12, 2019

Chairperson of Tarun Bharat Sangh writes about their fight against illegal mining that started in the 1980s

Our movement against illegal mining started in the 1980s. Our non-profit Tarun Bharat Sangh vigorously took up water conservation works, like pond constructions and river rejuvenation, in different villages of Alwar district of Rajasthan.

There was an incident which changed the course of our movement. In Tilwari village in Sariska Tiger Reserve, we constructed two ponds and tried to revive a few old wells. But to our surprise, water would not seep up through the ground and the ponds and wells ran dry. On the other hand, the mining pits in the village were always flooded and miners had to pump the water out before conducting mining operations every day. It then dawned on us that the hydrology of the area was moving the water to the mining area. Read more

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