Niyamgiri: MoEF says rejection of forest nod as per law

Indian Express, Aug 22, 2011
Krishnadas Rajagopal 

With Orissa Mining Corporation Limited (OMCL) claiming that the rejection of forest clearance to its bauxite mining project at Niyamgiri hills is aimed as a rebuff to the Supreme Court’s green signal for the billion-dollar venture, the Ministry of Environment and Forests met the charge head-on.
In a detailed affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) says it is only doing its job.
The court had in two consecutive judgments dated November 23, 2007 and August 8, 2008 cleared the project.
But the ministry’s affidavit is firm: “MoEF is bound to apply its own mind and grant independent clearance to the project.” It says the rejection of stage-II forest clearance to the bauxite mining project was in “accordance with law” and certainly within its own executive powers.
The August 30, 2010 rejection of forest clearance stalled the integrated plan to divert 660.749 hectares of forest land for mining of bauxite ore on the Niyamgiri Hills region of Orissa. OMCL had in 2004 signed the original agreement with Vedanta Aluminium Ltd, later replaced by its sister concern, Sterlite. The bauxite mined would have gone to feed Vedanta’s Lanjigarh aluminium refinery. 
The rejection came after the government-appointed N C Saxena panel found the project would affect the ecology as well the primitive tribal group of Dongaria Kondhs living on the mountain slopes.
Permission to Vedanta for expansion of its 1-million tonne alumina refinery to 6-million tonne at Lanjigarh block of Kalahandi was also withdrawn.
The MoEF, represented by advocate Haris Beeran, hit back at OMCL by contending that the Supreme Court’s “in-principle” clearance of the mining project in 2008 was subject to the ministry’s own final approval.
The Supreme Court had never directed the MoEF to blindly clear the project just because the court had given the green signal. It had only said that the final approval was to be given by the ministry “in accordance with law”, argues the ministry.
“In accordance with law must mean in accordance with the provisions of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, the Environment Protection Act, 1986, and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. This Hon’ble Court did not direct the MoEF to issue forest clearance in accordance with its own order. The effect of order dated 8 August 2008 is therefore not that the MoEF cannot discharge its statutory obligation under the Forest Conservation Act,” states the ministry.
Similarly, in a separate affidavit simultaneously filed, the ministry countered OMCL’s frontal attack on its “last- minute” withdrawal of environmental clearance on July 7, 2011to the project.
The Orissa-government run corporation had wanted to know why the decision was made by the ministry just prior to the Cabinet reshuffle. In its nine-page application, OMCL had said the withdrawal of environmental clearance “smacked of the heights of arbitrariness”.
This had prompted a Bench of Justices R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik on August 2 to direct the ministry to explain why it had to withdraw a clearance already given.
Replying to the court’s query, the ministry simply said it had found no reason to continue with the environment clearance accorded to the project when the forest clearance had already been rejected. It said the clearance had only been “withdrawn” and not “cancelled”.