-The Hindu On the day that Veerappa Moily took over reins, the Environment Ministry eased environmental clearance norms for select industries, including brick kiln owners and river sand miners. On December 24, the Ministry took a decision to exempt a slew of different types of industrial and mining projects from either providing environmental impact assessment reports or holding public hearings when they are approved by the state government. Categorising these set of...
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Half of Odisha’s iron ore mines lack clearance: panel-Nitin Sethi
-The Hindu They used a legal loophole to violate environmental norms Ninety-four of the 192 iron ore Mining leases in Odisha do not have the mandatory environmental clearances. And of the 96 that did have them, 75 have mined far beyond their permitted levels over the past several years, the Justice M.B. Shah Commission report on illegal iron and manganese ore mining has said. The Hindu has accessed parts of the report,...
More »Centre to SC: Taking follow-up action on Shah Commission findings -Utkarsh Anand
-The Indian Express The Centre has defended before the Supreme Court its decision to wind up the Justice MB Shah Commission, which was set up to inquire into illegal mining activities across several states. The government, in an affidavit, has pointed out that not only was the original tenure of the panel been extended from 18 to 33 months, the government was also taking appropriate follow-up actions on the basis of commission's...
More »Mega land acquisition by Bengal for coal blocks -Rohit Khanna & Suman Chakraborti
-The Times of India KOLKATA: The West Bengal Mineral Development & Trading Corporation Ltd will acquire around 2,800 hectares of land for three coal blocks in Burdwan, one of the largest land acquisitions by any state-run agency since Trinamool Congress came to power in Bengal in May 2011. The corporation-which has already been pulled up by the coal ministry for delay in the project's execution-needs to take 1186.83 hectares for the Ichhapur...
More »Digging up the dirt-Madhav Gadgil
-The Hindu Mining companies have received favourable impact assessments even as they do great damage to the environment because regulators are willing to look the other way Last week, world leaders concerned about economic development got together at the International Monetary Fund, and gave a series of most instructive interviews. Our Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, said that his problem was the slowing down of India's economic growth and reduction in government revenues....
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