Directing that e-auction of 37 mines including five coal mines in Jharkhand will be subject to its final orders, a bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde, Justice AS Bopanna and Justice V Ramasubramanian from the Supreme Court asked the Center to inform the bidders that any benefit would be temporary and would be within the scope of the final order of the apex court.
On November 4, the court had indicated that an e-auction would not be conducted for allocation of proposed coal mines within 50 km radius of ecologically sensitive area in Jharkhand for commercial purposes. The apex court said that it only wants to make sure that ‘forests are not destroyed’. On behalf of the Center, Attorney General KK Venugopal said that not a single tree cut will be cut in the area.
The court said that it is considering setting up a committee of experts who will find out whether the area near the proposed mining site in Jharkhand is an environmentally sensitive area or not. Attorney General KK Venugopal opposed this stating that mining sites are 20 to 70 km from the ecologically sensitive zone and if the same scale is implemented in states like Goa, mining will become impossible there.
Hearing the case through video conference, the bench said that the issue will be listed to decide the case and if the parties agree, it will question witnesses and during this time e-auction will be stalled and report can be received from expert committee on ecologically sensitive areas. The next date of hearing has been set as December 8.
