UPA’s decision to deny extension to Shah Commission midway through its task has come for scrutiny before SC
The Centre’s decision to wind up the Justice MB Shah Commission that is probing illegal mining in the country midway through its task has come for scrutiny before the Supreme Court.
In the past, the UPA Government gave extension to a whole lot of committees and commissions but it refused to accede to the Shah Commission’s request for a one-year extension to complete the mammoth task entrusted to it. The commission’s tenure ended on October 16.
The Commission was yet to go into irregularities in grant of mining leases in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.Questioning the timing of the court’s decision, an application filed by NGO Goa Foundation said: “The decision not to grant extension to the Justice Shah Commission as was sought by the Commission itself, is clearly mala fide since it has become clear that the work of the Commission was affecting the interests of big corporate and mining barons as well as top politicians and Ministers in the country.”
The application will be heard next Monday. After it was set up on November 22, 2010, the Commission’s report on Goa led to suspension of 139 environment clearances for 182 mining leases in the State by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. later, the Supreme Court too acknowledged this report before ordering suspension of all mining activity in the State on October 5 last year.
The first extension granted to the Commission came to an end on July 16, 2013 following which the panel requested for a year’s extension. It was at this juncture, the Commission was examining illegal mining in States of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. The Centre allowed the Commission to continue for another three months till October 16, and then wound it up.
The application pointed out: “On one hand, the Government keeps extending the term of useless Commissions of Inquiries for decades together, but here a Commission that was doing good work and was submitting detailed actionable reports, has been closed.”The Commission even wrote to the Centre on June 3 this year requesting for a one-year extension as it required time to complete its enquiry into other States.
The Commission's work on Odisha and Jharkhand is yet to be revealed by the Centre and it is understood that the Shah panel had Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra next on its radar.
The application has urged the SC to either extend the tenure of the Shah Commission or in the alternative direct the Commission to undertake its work as a court-appointed panel. It even demanded that the work prepared by the Commission so far should also be placed in public domain as there was a suspicion that the decision to deny further extension to the Commission had much to do with what the Commission exposed in its latest work.