Accusing the State Government of defying the directions passed by the Supreme Court on May 16 regarding the renewal of mining lease, senior BJP leader Saryu Roy alleged on Tuesday that the Jharkhand Government was prejudiced towards the renewal of mining lease.
According to Roy, the State Government in spite of renewing the lease of mines supplying iron and manganese ores to the Jharkhand based industries is giving priority to the renewal of lease of those non-captive mines from where ores are taken away from the State for export and other purposes.
Roy added that the Supreme Court has clearly mentioned in its direction that, “State Government will first consider the renewal of applications with respect of lease which were granted for captive mining for providing iron ore or manganese ore as raw material for industries and only thereafter consider the renewal applications in respect of the other leases.”
With this, all those mines, having second and third renewal were pending with the State Government, were closed with instructions to the State Governments to complete the process of renewal of leases within six months. Jharkhand Government took four months to abide by this direction passed by the Apex court while the Odisha government immediately closed the mines.
Ideally, the lease of the mines for Tata Steel and Bokaro Steel should have been renewed first, then only renewal of other lease should have been done but the State Government is doing opposite to it. It also raises question on the integrity of those people who are sitting on the crucial positions in the department.
Roy demanded that the Chief Minister must stop this immediately or he himself will be responsible for the irregularity being done in the renewal of leases of non-captive mines involving crores.