Orissa Mining Corporation to seek for speedy hearing of Niyamgiri Hills case today

DNA, March 14, 2011
Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC), the mining body of the Orissa government, is planning to appeal in the Supreme Court on Monday for speedy hearing of its case it filed against the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) last week.


Almost six months after the MoEF directed OMC and the Vedanta Group to stop mining bauxite from the Niyamgiri Hills in the Kalahandi district, Lanjigarh, OMC filed an Interlocutory Application (IA) in the Supreme Court challenging MoEF’s decision on March 10.

Now, the company is planning to put the case on ‘mention’, which means that if accepted, the case will be considered on a priority and emergency basis.

“OMC, through its advocate KK Venugopal, will put up the case for mention in the Green Bench of the Supreme Court to be heard by Justice Sudarshan Reddy. It would then depend on the judge whether he wants to refer it to the Chief Justice of India or wants to hear it himself,” said an industry source, adding that if the plea is accepted then the case could come up for hearing as early as the next week itself.

In the application filed with the Supreme Court on Thursday, OMC had said that the company had to apply in the court since the MoEF has rejected the Stage- II forest clearance for the OMC bauxite mining project in the Niyamgiri Hills of Lanjigarh, thereby effectively neutralising the SC judgements dated November 22, 2007 and August 8, 2008.

In these judgements, the court had granted clearance for diversion of forest land of 660.749 hectares for mining bauxite.

“The most unfortunate aspect of the matter is that the considerations which form the foundation of the decision of the MoEF are the very same considerations which were urged before the Honourable Court, and which were all taken into account by this Honourable Court while granting clearance to the project in question,” the application said.

The MoEF in August 2010 accepted the recommendations of the four-member Forest Advisory Committee headed by N C Saxena and stopped mining in Niyamgiri Hills and the expansion of Vedanta’s one million tonne alumina refinery in Lanjigarh, citing that mining would severely impact the ecology of the Niyamgiri Hills.

The mining contractor for the Niyamgiri project was a joint venture company with 76% stake of Sterlite Industries, a listed subsidiary of Vedanta Group, and the remaining with OMC. The bauxite to be mined was to be fed to Vedanta’s Lanjigarh refinery.