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Following is from http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report_environment-ministrys-sail-tilt-miffs-orissa_1517973. After the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) cancelled several projects and put roadblocks (read riders) on many other, it seems the companies or organisations at the receiving end are not ready to give up without a fight. The Orissa government’s mining entity Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC) on Tuesday knocked at the doors of Supreme Court challenging the ministry’s August 2010 decision to stop mining bauxite from the Niyamgiri Hills. The ministry and its boss Jairam Ramesh had in August 2010 accepted the recommendations of the four-member forest advisory committee headed by NC Saxena and pulled the curtains down on mining in Niyamgiri Hills citing severe flouting of environmental and forest conservation norms. The mining contractor for the Niyamgiri project was a joint venture company with 76% stake of Sterlite Industries, a the listed-subsidiary of Vedanta Resources and the remaining with OMC. The bauxite to be mined was to be fed to Vedanta’s Lanjigarh refinery. Sources say the Orissa government, after an endless wait and a fruitless representation to the MoEF, has finally decided to go the legal way and has prepared a complete war chest of arguments to take on the ministry. “While the Orissa government was planning to challenge MoEF’s decision in the Supreme Court for quite sometime, the what finally prompted it was Ramesh’s nod to a larger and environmentally more damaging project of Chiria mines in Jharkhand,” said a highly reliable source in OMC. On February 22, Ramesh, in a surprising change of stance by over-ruling negative reports from the ministry’s forest advisory committee (FAC), gave a go-ahead to Steel Authority of India (SAIL) to mine iron ore from the prolific Chiria mines in Jharkhand. In a statement on February 22, Ramesh said: “The FAC will continue to focus on bio-diversity-related issues and concerns, while as minister I will have to necessarily take a broader view but placing on record in a complete manner the reasons for taking that view.” However, Orissa is particularly miffed with this decision since it claims that on a comparative scale the Niyamgiri Hills too had a merit for approval and its impact on the environment would have been far less than the Chiria mines. “Much before the FAC was appointed, several other committees had done a study on the project and had given a decision in its favour,” the source said. Ironically, these bodies were appointed by the ministry to clear the mining project in 2007. The Central Mine Planning and Design Institute in its study on hydro-geological aspects had said that there are no water bodies, water table is available at a depth of 78m from top of the hill and mineral is available only up to 30-35m depth from top, therefore, no impact on groundwater. Similarly, Orissa Agriculture University of Technology (OAUT) established that due to khondalite rocks and very minimal soil cover available, soil erosion is negligible at Niyamgiri Hills and there is no possibility of choking any stream running at the bottom of the hill. Only, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) had said that in any case the Wildlife Sanctuary located nearby Niyamgiri should not be affected. The Supreme Court, on August 8, 2008, based on detailed studies conducted by WII, CMPDIL, OAUT and recommendation of MOEF had cleared the Forest Diversion proposal after a prolonged debate spanning three years. “In spite of these, OMC was stopped from mining, while a central PSU like SAIL was given a go ahead,” he said. The source said Chiria iron ore mining project covers an area of around 2,376 hectares, which is 3% of total Saranda Forest area in Jharkhand where it is located. On the other hand, the total Niyamgiri Hill range is around 250 square km out of which nearly 7 sq km is the proposed mining lease area which constitute nearly 1.5 % of the total area. “Hence the forest cover diverted will be much less than that in Chiria,” he said. In the MoEF note, Ramesh said SAIL being a public sector unit, has a good track record of delivering corporate social responsibility. “Going by this track record, our partner Vedanta has already been investing Rs10 crore as profit from notional profit from proposed mining every year and Rs12.20 crore towards tribal development,” the source said. The area in and around Chiria is predominantly inhabited by Ho tribal community, which constitutes nearly 10% population (approx. 70,00,000) of Jharkhand population. While the number of tribals living in and around Niyamgiri are inhabited by Dongria Kondh tribal race having a total population of nearly 8600. “So the number of people affected through the project are far less,” he said. The mining process in Chiria will involve blasting, there by impacting the wildlife near Chiria forests while OMC will be incorporating surface miner and ripper dozer techniques which are blast-free processes, he said.