CEC report on Chitradurga, Tumkur this week

The CEC, which has completed an environmental impact survey of the two districts last week, will submit the report by Thursday, said a CEC member on condition of anonymity.
“We are currently preparing the report on these two districts and will submit it to the Supreme Court on Thursday or Friday,” the member said.

Tumkur, in particular, has come under the scanner, after extensive cases of illegal mining was discovered during the visit of CEC Chairman P V Jayakrishnan and member Mahendra Vyas. Tumkur has also been in the news after the family of Minister V Somanna was named in the Lokayukta report for being involved in illegal mining.

However, it will not be just illegal mining that the CEC report will be focussing on -- the report is also likely to look at the environmental impact of mining, whether legal or illegal.

A similar look at the environmental impact on Bellary by the CEC found that 92 pc of the recorded forest cover had degraded resulting in the Supreme Court temporarily banning mining in the district.

As per records of the State government, Bellary has a total recorded forest area of 1.38 lakh hectares -- about 16 pc of the total area.

However, a report by the Forest Survey of India (State of Forest Report, 2009) found that only 11,000 hectares is “moderately dense forest,” while another 66,200 hectares fall in the category of open forest.

The CEC has completed its joint survey of 96 mines of the total 99 in Bellary district.