 "Shah Panel visit this week, to raise mines boundary issue")
The fifth round of hearing of the state government and the miners by the Commission is expected to take place from Wednesday after Justice M B Shah reaches here.
A team of the state officials including steel and mines secretary, will present their views in front of the panel members. They will be assisted by three Supreme Court advocates,
The main issue which may dominate the three-day visit of the Commission is anomalies in the lease area boundary map, which has become the primary source of illegal mining activities in the state.
The Commission has already pointed out that the mines lease maps provided by the state government and prepared using differential global positioning system (DGPS) do not match and hence, there was delay in determining the nature of violation by the miners.
Sources said, the state government will plead before the Shah panel members not to take the DGPS maps in determining the nature of the violations as the digitisation of revenue map is yet to completed. Besides, there is bound to be difference between original map and DGPS map since the original maps were determined on the basis of manual method during the sixties.
The state government is likely to request the Shah Commission to take a field tour of the mines, whose maps are yet to be rectified.
Before its visit, the panel had asked 186 iron ore and manganese miners of the state to submit data regarding status of the lease, clearances, mineral sales and raising of ore. They were asked to submit their views regarding state government and Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) data.
On behalf of the miners, Supreme Court advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi will present his views before Justice Shah.
Several mines owners had approached the Commission to give them a hearing before finalisation of the report. East Zone Miners’ Association (EZMA) and Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI) had expressed fear that the Commission report will be one-sided as their views had not been taken into consideration.
Mines owners were of the view that they have not committed any mistake by undertaking excess mining as they have paid the royalty to the government.
As per recent amendments made to Mineral Concession Rule, 1960, mining done beyond lease area is considered as illegal, while rule violation inside lease area is to be considered as irregularity.