Want transparency in mining lease allotments: Gadkari

Pakistan Telegraph (IANS) Sunday 5th February, 2012

The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) will ensure transparency in alloting mining leases in Goa if it is voted to power in the March 3 assembly elections, its president Nitin Gadkari said Sunday.

Gadkari also said that "eccentric" green norms in India needed to be modified to ensure a balance between the environment, industry and employment.

Gadkari, who was in Goa to finalise a pre-poll seat sharing alliance with the regional Maharashtrawadi Gomantk Party, was speaking to reporters in Panaji Sunday.

"I have discussed the issue (mining) at length with the leadership. We are looking at transparency in the allotment of mines. We need both, environment and industry," Gadkari said, adding that the party would seriously address the mining issues both in Karantaka and at the centre and look to evolve a cohesive policy.

Gadkari's statement assumes significance in Goa where mining leases allotted to influential families during the Portuguese era continue to be operated by them even now.

Before Sesa Goa limited, a Vedanta Resources-owned company, bought over all the mining leases operated by the very influential Dempo family a couple of years back, a handful of families controlled virtually the entire mining industry in Goa, which was operated with the help of numerous opaquely managed private limited companies.

Before Gadkari's poll pledge, the Communist Party of India as well as civil society groups in Goa have consistently demanded that the multi-crore mining industry in Goa be nationalised.

Gadkari has also called for a rehaul of India's environment laws, which he called "eccentric", when it came to heavy industries like mining.

"The eccentric environment laws are not appropriate," Gadkari said, adding that there had to be a balance between employment, industry and development.

The BJP has accused the Digambar Kamat-led government of sitting over a Rs.25,000 crore mining scam, of which the opposition says several ministers are a part of.