Times of India: Panaji: Sunday,
July 28, 2013.
The Goa
Foundation, petitioner in the illegal mining case under way in the Supreme
Court, has sought directions from the court to direct its own independent
inquiry into the case, as recommended by the central empowered committee (CEC),
as the state government lacks the capacity and equally the will and desire to
carry out such inquiries on its own.
The
petitioner also said that the government has failed to recover the lost
revenues.
Claude
Alvares, secretary, Goa Foundation, has stated that there has been no progress
whatsoever with regard to the prosecution of politicians, bureaucrats and
mining companies that were involved in the illegal mining and excess
production. No FIR has been lodged till date, despite the present government being
firmly in charge for more than one year.
He stated
that similarly, no actions have been initiated by the Goa government to recover
the revenues lost due to excess mining and illegal mining even as per the state
government's own reduced estimates.
"The
director of mines and geology has rejected all requests for information from
his department filed under the RTI Act on the specious ground that the matter
is now pending in the Supreme Court," the affidavit states.
It further
points out that the state-appointed Khandeparkar committee has still not had a
single meeting, 10 months after the government decided to set it up to inquire
into illegal mining.
The
petitioner has also stated that the affidavit has been filed to bring on record
the recommendations of two high-level committees set up by the ministry of
environment and forests (MoEF) concerning various measures to be taken in
respect of protection of the ecologically-fragile, biodiversity-rich Western
Ghats. "As most of the mining leases in Goa are in the Western Ghats
region, the recommendations of these committees ought to be considered by the
apex court while deciding the issues raised in the petition," states the
petition.