CUTTACK: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday said the Orissa Space Applications Centre (ORSAC) cannot take the plea of model code of conduct and express inability to conduct survey of and provide report on mining activities at Nihalprasad road metal stone quarry in Gondia tehsil of Dhenkanal district.
NGT’s East Zone bench in Kolkata said this when the collector of Dhenkanal filed an interlocutory application seeking four months’ time for filing the affidavit along with ORSAC’s survey report with satellite data that was necessary to assess the quantity of mining for calculating the illegal excess mining at the quarry.
The tribunal was hearing a petition filed by Santanu Bhukta, a resident of the area seeking intervention against illegal operations involving excess mining beyond the prescribed limit and violation of environmental clearance (EC) conditions at Road Metal Stone Quarry. Advocate Sankar Prasad Pani represented the petitioner. The state counsel SK Nayak also submitted a letter received from ORSAC on April 22, 2024.
The letter said satellite data on the stone quarry would be available only after MCC is over. So, permission from Election Commission is required for conducting the ORSAC survey with regard to allegations of illegal mining at the stone quarry. Taking the letter on record, the bench of Justice B Amit Sthalekar (judicial member) and Dr Arun Kumar Verma (expert member) said, “We fail to understand as to why sanction of the Election Commission is required for a survey into an investigation of an alleged criminal activity.”
The notices in this case were issued on 22.10.2023 and at that time there was no model code of conduct and there were no elections. “We fail to understand as to why ORSAC cannot conduct the survey without the sanction of the Election Commission and provide report to the collector & district magistrate, Dhenkanal,” the bench observed.
“We, therefore, direct the collector & district magistrate, Dhenkanal, to ensure that the affidavit along with ORSAC report is filed within four weeks failing which provisions of section 26 of the NGT, 2010 would be invoked,” the bench said.