Mining scam: SC allows Goa govt to appoint Principal Secy as nodal officer

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday accepted a proposal of the Goa government to make its Principal Secretary the convener of a six-member committee formed for suggesting the annual cap on the volume of iron ore to be extracted in the state.  The state government told a three-judge bench headed Justice A K Patnaik that the bureaucrat will also act as the nodal officer for providing all logistic support to the panel which would file its report on February 15. Besides Principal Secretary of the state, the panel comprises a senior officer not below the rank of Joint Secretary, of Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and four experts. Earlier, the bench, also comprising justices S S Nijjar and F M Ibrahim Kalifulla, had nominated four experts who included an ecologist, a geologist, a mineralogist and an expert on forest, in the panel after considering various names provided by the parties including NGO Goa Foundation and the state government. Ecologist C R Babu, Geologist S C Dhiman, Mineralogist B K Mishra and S Parmeshwarappa have been nominated as members of the panel. The panel will look into the issue of fixing the annual cap on iron ore mining, keeping in view the principle of inter-generational equity and environment-carrying capacity. The issue of environment-carrying capacity relates to the extent environment and surroundings of a mine can sustain or bear ore extraction activities. The bench had said it would pronounce the verdict on the PIL after the filing of the report by the six-member expert committee on 15 February. Earlier, the bench had allowed e-auctioning of nearly 11.48 million tonnes of extracted iron ore lying unused in Goa for over a year after it halted mining operations in 90 mines there. PTI