By SNV Sudhir
Visakhapatnam, Mar 5, 2013: While the state government is inclined to study and emulate
Gujarat’s maritime board, environmentalists are pointing that it is not
interested in taking up measures to tackle issues related to illegal mining the
way Modi government has formulated to check the illegal activity.
It may be worth mentioning here that state ports and
infrastructure minister, Ganta Srinivasa Rao along with a team of senior
officials belonging to his ministry, visited Gujarat
and met its chief minister Narendra Modi on setting up maritime board in Andhra
Pradesh in February this year.
Environmentalists alleged that the government which came under
fire, due to various illegal mining activities, right from Obulapuram mining to
Avelthi, Sarugudu, Kannedhara granite quarrying in Srikakulam district, in the
name of curtailing the activity has, issued a G O just making some changes to
the procedure while issuing No Objection Certificate (NOC) to conduct mining.
Whereas the Gujarat
government in 2011 issued orders through mines and industries department
forming Grievance Redressal Committees at state, district and taluk level to
effectively check illegal mining.
While the state level committee meets every quarterly to
check the action taken by the concerned authorities over the illegal activity
and study the status report of the complaints, the district and taluk level
committees are mandated to meet once in a month. The Gujarat
order also clearly fixes the responsibility to the illegal mining
activity. The order says that in the
case of detection of illegal mining activity the in charge police
offuicer/revenue officer/ officer of the geology and mining department of the
area concerned will be held accountable.
The G O M S No 2 of the revenue department of the state
government dated, Jan 2, 2013 issued instructions directing that no “NOC”
should be issued by the Tahsildar in respect of licenses for mining lease and
quarry lease purposes. It also issued a new uniform guidelines and one among
them is that Joint Inspection Team consisting of Revenue Divisional Officer,
Divisional Forest Officer and Assistant Director ( Mines and Geology) should
inspect the proposed land and submit detailed report to the district Collector
within 30 days after receipt of the application for grant of licence for mining
or quarry lease.
A District Level Screening Committee may also be constituted
under the Chairmanship of the district collector to take collective decisions
on issue of NOCs. The district collector will be the chairman of the committee,
RDO, pollution control board executive engineer, joint collector, tahsildhar
concerned will be the members and assistant director of mines and geology
department will be the member convenor.
The District Level Screening Committee will meet once in
every 60 days and scrutinize the report of Joint Inspection Team and take a
decision on the issue of NOC and forward it’s decision to the mines and geology
director for necessary action.
“What is needed now is not only stricter norms while issuing
mining licenses but also vigilant government machinery after the license is
issued to check illegal activity. For instance if the mining license by a
contractor manages to get in 3 months in the earlier system it will take
another 3 to 6 months more to ‘manage’ those in the inspection team as per the
new guidelines issued. Actually in a way government is facilitating the
contractor to ‘manage’ several officers at a go. Responsibility and
accountability should be fixed and the officers concerns should be punished if
the illegal mining is found,” said G Srininvas of, Samata, an NGO fighting for
tribal rights and against illegal mining in forest lands.
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