Chitradurga

Supreme Court cancels Karnataka's 49 mining leases

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday cancelled all the leases for iron ore extraction in 49 category C mines - with the highest degree of illegal mining - in Bellary, Tumkur and Chitradurga districts of Karnataka.

The apex court's forest bench of Justice Aftab Alam, Justice KS Radhakrishnan and Justice Ranjan Gogoi, while accepting the recommendations of the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) on green matters in its Feb 3, 2012 report, said the "leases in respect of 'C' Category mines will stand cancelled...."

Category C mines are those in which the CEC detected the highest level of illegal mining and encroachment. Category B have lesser illegal activities and Category A have the least violations.

Justice Gogoi said: "The proceeds of the sales of the iron ore of the 'C' category mines made through the monitoring committee will stand forfeited to the state. The monitoring committee will remit the amounts held by it on this account to the SPV (special purpose vehicle) for utilisation in connection with the purposes for which it had been constituted."...more    

K'taka: SC may allow some iron ore mining to resume

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday indicated that it may permit resumption of iron ore mining in category A mines in Karnataka's Bellary, Chitradurga and Timkur districts, provided they complied with all statutory forest and environmental clearances. "The statutory compliance must be there. There can be no compromise on the statutory clearance and the undertaking by the lease holder on rehabilitation and reclamation of devastated mines," said the forest...  

'Enrichment capacity enough to fuel nuke subs'

New Delhi: Dr Srikumar Banerjee, chairman of Atomic Energy Commission of India (AECI), spoke to Saurav Jha, author of The Upside Down Book of Nuclear Power, recently at the former's South Bloc office on a gamut of issues concerning the state of nuclear power development in India. Saurav Jha:Is your current enrichment capability sufficient to fuel Indias emerging nuclear submarine fleet or will that be attained only with Chitradurga? If...