SC seeks reply from Centre, States on plea against coal blocks auction in densely forest areas

The Supreme Court on Monday sought response from Centre and seven states on a plea challenging the decision to allocate/auction coal blocks for commercial mining in densely forested areas.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian issued notice and tagged the matter along with other pending matters related to mining.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for an activist Sudiep Srivastava said that this is a serious issue as the government has itself declared the areas as no go areas.

“Mr Bhushan, we are issuing notice but we will take up this matter along with other pending mining cases,” the bench said.

The seven states from whom the top court has sought response include Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Telangana.   The plea of Srivastava said, “The instant writ petition is being filed in larger public interest under Article 32 of the Constitution of India challenging the Union of India's decision/s to allot different coal block by of auction and allotment, situated in densely forested areas of the different States whereas less forested coal blocks are available in abundance”.

It said that this is being done in contravention of the principles of Sustainable Development and Precautionary Principle since only 15 per cent of Indian Coal Deposit lies beneath the Densely Forested Areas and remaining 85 percent can fulfill even the enhanced demand of the Coal for coming 50 to 70 years.   “It is further pertinent to mention that the use of coal world over is going to be less year by year as renewable energy like Solar is now economically viable. India being the signatory of the Paris Climate Change Agreement also has an obligation to reduce/control its carbon footprint. Combustion of coal itself is a main source of CO2 emission and if the same would be done by cutting dense forests which are the main sink of CO2 then it would have a sort of quadrupled impact on the climate,” it said.

The plea said that the allotment of other major mineral deposits as well is being done in routine manner without classifying the same in different categories on the basis of environmental value and exploiting the less damaging one at the first instance and saving the pristine area thus compromising the environmental security of the nation…”, it said.   The plea said that the decision to allot Coal and other mineral blocks in dense forest especially when less forested blocks are available is in direct contravention of the National Forest Policy 1988 as well.

“In the aforesaid backdrop there is a need of a guideline in terms of the classification of mineral deposits on their environmental value to guide the clearance process that certain biodiversity rich areas are not to be touched unless the environmentally less important deposits are completely exhausted,” it said.

The plea said that the Centre did not consider the environmental aspect and went on to allot/auction many such coal blocks which were classified as No Go areas along with the Coal Blocks of the GO areas.   “As many as 99 Coal Blocks have been allotted/ auctioned to various government and private companies between 2015 and till date under the Coal Mines Special Provisions Act 2015.  29 of these Blocks were allotted by auction whereas 70 coal blocks have been allotted to various Government Companies' Out of these 99 coal blocks, in which 17 Coal Blocks were classified as NO GO,” the plea added.

It said that the allotment or auction of the Coal Blocks without any prior forest clearance is in contravention of the provisions of Forest Conservation Act 1980 and Environment Protection Act 1986.

"Still the Union of India has further announced auction of 41 Coal Blocks for commercial purposes and out of them 13 were classified as NO GO in the earlier study and 8 were even classified as in violate by the FSI,” it said.

The petitioner sought de-allocation of all coal blocks situated in the densely forested areas which were categorized as No Go in 2010 study beside seeking a direction from the Court to Centre for proper inventory of coal and all other major mineral deposits on the basis of their environmental value.

He also sought a direction by which no mineral blocks should be allotted or auctioned without the prior forest and environment clearance.

Srivastava said that a guideline is required to be framed for consideration of the Forest and Environment Clearance proposals for mining like any other developmental project where alternates were required to be studied in terms of the Forest Conservation Rules 1980 and Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2006.   He sought quashing of the auction of the Coal Blocks earlier categorised as NO GO and/or In-Violate and de-allocation of all the coal blocks classified as No Go (category A) and In-Violate category allotted/auctioned between 2015- 2020, where mining has not commenced.

The petition also sought direction to Centre to immediately notify all the NO GO (A category) Coal Blocks of Go-No Go study and In-violate Coal Blocks as Environmentally Sensitive Zone under the Environment Protection Act of 1986.