THE GOAN NETWORKPANAJIThe Supreme Court of India has listed for August 26 the hearing inGoa’s mining cases after a brief hearing when the matter came up forhearing on August 18.The cases have been filed by Vedanta and other mining companiesseeking that their leases be declared as valid, claiming that they areeligible for a 50-year lease tenure with effect from 1987.The Goa government has also filed a review petition urging theSupreme Court to reconsider its judgement of 2018 which cancelledGoa’s 88 mining leases
on account of being in haste and apparentlyintended to avoid the process of auction.The petitions have been pending for several months now, with thedelay only exacerbated by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. A groupof panchayats have also sought to intervene in the petitions to urge thecourt for an urgent restart of mining.The mining industry, which is a crucial generator of jobs and at itspeak contributed up to a third of Goa's Gross State Domestic Product(GSDP) according to government documents, has suffered multipleand crippling setbacks in the current decade.First, operations were banned in 2012 by the Apex Court after aJudicial Commission of Enquiry unearthed an allegedillegal mining scam worth Rs 35,000 crore. A second setback was when in 2018 the Apex Court brought theindustry to a grinding halt by upholding Goa Foundation's challengeto renewal of 88 leases by the successive governments of lateManohar Parrikar and Laxmikant Parsekar.
