SEEKING TO MEET
PRIME MINISTER
The delegation comprising four BJP ministers, 3 MPs and also the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are headed for Delhi to meet the Prime Minister and party president Amit Shah
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PANAJI: The ruling BJP has decided to approach Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the question of re-starting mining in Goa after the local party leaders were heckled by legislators at a stormy meeting at party headquarters in Panaji on Monday.
"A delegation comprising the four BJP ministers, 3 MPs and also the Speaker and Deputy Speaker will go to meet the Prime Minister and party president Amit Shah, with the demand for early resumption of mining in Goa," the party's Goa unit president Vinay Tendulkar told the media after the meeting.
Apart from mining, the issue of employment as well as development works in constituencies of the individual MLAs of the party were also discussed at the meeting.
Mining in Goa has come to a grinding halt for a second time in March 2018 after the Supreme Court struck down the 'second renewal' of some 88 mining leases effected by the successive Manohar Parrikar and Laxmikant Parsekar governments between 2014 and 2017.
In August 2018 Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar had sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention to address the current crisis in the state's mining sector. Parrikar had in a written request to Modi urged the tweaking of a law through an ordinance which would validate Goa's mining leases up to 2037.
He had argued that it affects around 1.5 lakh people in Goa and also hit iron ore exports up to Rs 25,000-crore.
Earlier, the Goa Legislature had also passed a resolution urging the Centre to suitably amend the Goa, Daman and Diu Mining Concessions (Abolition and Declaration as Mining Leases) Act, to allow mining leases in the state to be operational till 2037.
Parrikar had told the media after his meeting with the Prime Minister in August that the latter had passed on the request to the Group of Ministers on mining. However, there is no sign that the GoM has considered or ruled favourably on the issue, thus far.
Recently, the leader of Goa Forward Party and TCP Minister Vijay Sardessai, who is a coalition partner in the BJP-led dispensation had met the Union Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu and requested him to intervene in favour of early resumption of mining. Prabhu is a member of the GOM on mining.
