Mining will stay in the doldrums

Mining operations within Goa are in the doldrums despite frantic efforts by the BJP ministers to circumvent the Supreme Court judgment banning extraction from March 15 which will result in a loss of Rs 3500 crore each year to Goa’s exchequer. 

Mining contributes a sum of Rs 34 billion to Goa’s exchequer or between 12 and 14 per cent of Goa’s Gross Domestic Product, according to the Goa Mineral Ore Exporters Association. Over 60,000 people depend directly on mining for their livelihood while 200,000 others are indirectly dependent on it.  

Goans do not realize that the mine-owners ruled Goa from behind-the-scenes even after Goa was liberated on December 19, 1961 because Goa’s first chief minister, Dayanand Bandodkar, was himself a wealthy mine-owner. 

It was alleged that the big mine-owners propped up Bandodkar to protect their business interests which was one reason why the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party sought to merge Goa with Maharashtra. 

Bandodkar hailed from Tuljapur tehsil located in Osmanabad district of Maharashtra, which was another reason why he wanted to merge Goa with Maharashtra.   

The fact that Manohar Parrikar is now in the US for medical treatment adds to the chaos of the mining industry because Parrikar, with his mix of craftiness and shrewdness, made himself indispensable to Goa by keeping 21 sensitive portfolios with himself. 

As head of the executive, he knew how to circumvent the well-reasoned apex court judgment ostensibly for the benefit of those dependent on mining.   

Parrikar knew that successive governments needed the revenue generated from mining and the casinos. 

Be they licit or illicit, mine owners and the casino owners fill the coffers of the government and the bank accounts of a few ministers who comprised successive Goa governments whether BJP, MGP or the Congress.   

As the two-judge bench stated in their judgment, the Government of India was informed of large-scale illegal mining of iron ore and manganese ore in different states flouting the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 (the MMDR Act), the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and other rules and guidelines which was why it set up the Justice M.B. Shah Commission to study the illegal mining operations and recommend steps to halt it.   

This resulted in the Goa government stopping mining operations from September 12, 2012 until it was resumed in 2015. But the renewal of 88 mining leases was quashed by the apex court again halting mining operations from March 15. 

The Union ministry of Mines and Environment stayed the approvals for 137 mining leases which was an outcome of the Goa Foundation filing a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on all mining being carried out as they contravened the existing laws. 

Simultaneously, the affected lessees filed Writ Petitions in the Bombay high court for relief which were transferred to the Supreme Court.  

A BJP delegation from Goa had gone with high hopes to convince their partymen at the Centre to enact an ordinance to amend the Goa Daman and Diu Mining Concessions (Abolition and Declaration as Mining Leases) Act 1987 so as to change the date of application of the Act to the date of it getting the Presidential assent.  

If the BJP ministers at the Centre had to accept the Goa all-party delegation’s plea, these mining leases would have got a fresh lease of life for another 20 years. 

 Instead, the all-party delegation was reportedly told that they could land in jail for trying to thwart the Supreme Court judgment. 

This is because an ordinance or Central law enacted by Parliament overrides judge-made law which is exactly how Supreme Court judgments are thwarted by Parliament which is elected and not selected like the judges of the apex court.   

A much easier route would have been for this all-party delegation to seek extension of the March 15 deadline imposed by the Supreme Court through a review of its judgment. 

Although it would come up before the same bench, the judges would have considered extending the deadline sympathetically because of the enormous monetary loss to the Goan exchequer with concomitant loss of jobs.   

Now, if BJP MLA Nilesh Cabral is to be believed, the only way out is for these mining leases to be auctioned to the highest bidders with the Goa government writing the rules for the auctioning to ensure the interests of local businesses are not hit. 

With Parrikar recuperating in the US, how that will be done remains to be seen.