Court stops mining on 9-year-old’s petition

PANAJI - Acting on a petition filed by a nine-year-old boy, the Panaji bench of Bombay High Court has passed an interim order restraining the Vedanta-owned Sesa Goa’s mining operations at the firm’s Advalpal mining lease in North Goa.

The petitioner, Akash Naik from Advalpal village, was backed by well-known NGO Goa Foundation, which has taken up several litigations against mining firms in the past.

Naik in his petition has said that mining in Advalapal will destroy agriculture in the area and choke the water bodies, which are so essential to farm holdings. The order was passed Thursday.

“The village will neither have water nor paddy fields left, since the mining companies have destroyed all the nallahs (water channels) and piling of sediments washed from the mining pits has destroyed the cultivable lands,” Naik has said in his petition.

Norma Alvares, representing Naik, has also accused Sesa Goa of “indulging in unsafe mining practices”.

“Complaints made to the Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) about dumping of rejects precariously near human settlements were not heeded to by the agency,” Alvares said.

The hearing on Naik’s petition will be held next month. Operators of open cast mining in Goa have often been at loggerheads with farmers and environmentalists over pollution. Nearly 100 operational mining leases in Goa export approximately 33 million tonnes of iron, manganese and bauxite ore per year, mostly to China and Japan.

–Indo Asian News Service