Opinion Iron it out

In Orissa, where no ban was ever imposed, top steel companies, including Tata Steel and the public sector Sail, have been accused of mining excessively, so excessively that the penalties add up to Rs 58,000 crore. And while it is true that the bans have been lifted — a cap of 30 million tonnes per annum has been placed in Karnataka and 20 million tonnes in Goa — getting back lost production will take a long time. Though it has been a year since the Karnataka ban was lifted, production has reached just 19 million tonnes, and it is not clear when the Goa production will revive since licences have to be issued afresh.

While the bans were brought on by rampant illegal mining and blatant violation of environmental norms, an equally large part of the problem is that the laws themselves are archaic and their implementation worse. It doesn’t help that, with an overlap of both Central and state rules, there was no way that even law-abiding miners could not end up violating them.

In Goa, as the Supreme Court judgment shows, the state had been allowing miners to operate on “deemed” licences since 1988 — that is, they had applied for licence renewals but these had neither been granted nor rejected; this applies to other states as well. While “excessive” mining was the reason behind the ban in Goa, there was no scientific study on the state’s “carrying capacity” — this has been ordered now.

Indeed, while some believed the SC had banned mining within 10 km of a national park, nothing of the sort had been done — the Centre has been asked to come up with a decision on this now. While there is little doubt that even the states were to blame — for not keeping tabs on environmental pollution — the lifting of the ban should be used as an opportunity to clean up operations. In the case of Goa, where new licences are to be issued, auctioning them would be a good way to avoid charges of crony capitalism.