SC notice to Centre, states on plea against mining in dense forests, eco-sensitive areas

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Union as well as several state governments on a PIL against allowing mining in dense forests and eco-sensitive areas of the country.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian sought a response from the Centre and states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Telangana on the petition filed by activist and advocate Sudiep Shrivastava.

The petition, argued by advocate Prashant Bhushan, also sought framing of guidelines for dealing with forest clearance proposals for coal mining in dense forest areas. He said such clearance could be considered unless all the other available deposits of the said mineral were exhausted.

It asked the court to quash auction of 14 coal blocks situated in dense forest and were classified as no-go by a joint study of Ministry of Environment and Forest and Ministry of Coal.

The petition gave detailed examples of study of coal blocks and management plan of Saranda iron ore zone in Jharkhand to demonstrate that despite there being sufficient information and reports available which classified less forested or non-eco-sensitive areas as probable mining areas, the Union government was allowing mining in every area where mineral deposits existed.

"As a result, areas where environmental damage would be least due to mining are not being considered and 100% dense forest which are catchment of important rivers are subject to made available for mining," the petition claimed.

He sought a direction to the Union government to classify each mineral deposit in terms of their environmental forest value and allow mining only in those mineral deposits where the damage would be least to environment.

This is obligatory in terms of Forest Conservation Rule 7(2Xc) and Section 18 (1) of the MMDR Act 1957, his plea said.