Following is from a Q & A type article in Financial Express by Amitabh Sinha. Please read the article at its source for the details.

Did the environment ministry apply different yardsticks in the two cases? We answer the questions in our usual Q&A format.

Earlier this month, Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC), a state government owned enterprise, approached the Supreme Court, challenging the order of the Environment Ministry cancelling forest clearance to a bauxite mining project in the Niyamgiri area of Lanjigarh district of Orissa. The project was to be executed by Sterlite Industries India, a subsidiary of Vedanta Alumina, which had entered into an MoU with OMC in 2004.

One of the main reasons that is said to have emboldened the OMC to approach the Supreme Court, six months after the Environment Ministry had passed its order, was the recent decision to allow SAIL to mine iron ore in the Chiria mining complex of West Singhbhum district in Jharkhand. The Orissa government feels double standards had been applied in the two cases and argues that the environmental impact of the Chiria mines is going to be greater than the bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri hills. The Financial Express examines the two projects to see whether their cases are comparable:

What was the issue with the Niyamgiri project?

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And Chiria?

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What happened to Vedanta’s application for Niyamgiri project?

Vedanta had obtained stage-I forest clearance for the Niyamgiri project before running into trouble. While assessing its application, the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) — the permanent expert panel in the Environment Ministry that is responsible for assessing whether a project deserves to be given forest clearance or not — recommended that the final approval should be granted only after assessing the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in the area, a law that had come into effect in 2008. Two different committees looked into the implementation of FRA at the Vedanta site. One was a three-member committee set up on the recommendations of the FAC. The other committee was set up jointly by the Environment Ministry and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to assess the implementation of FRA all over the country. This committee, led by retired bureaucrat NC Saxena, had sent a sub-panel to the Vedanta site. Both had adverse remarks to make about the project.

What about Chiria?

In the case of Chiria, the FAC had actually recommended that SAIL’s proposal to mine iron ore in that area be rejected.

What led to the cancellation of the Niyamgiri project?

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So why was Chiria cleared?

In clearing SAIL’s proposal to mine Chiria, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh actually overturned the advice of his own ministry’s expert panel (FAC). Some of the reasons he gave justifying his decision were: …