New Delhi, Sep 28 (TNN): The Union ministry of mines on Thursday washed its hands of the perpetuation of illegal iron ore mining in Goa and informed the Supreme Court that permission for extraction of the mineral was subject to compliance of environment and forest clearances.

"The state mines department allows mining after satisfying that all the clearances/approvals under concerned statutes are obtained by the lessee," the mines department told a bench of Justices A K Patnaik, S S Nijjar and F M I Kalifulla.

It also rejected the finding of the Justice Shah committee, which said, "Indian Bureau of Mines and ministry of environment and forests have increased production (from the mines) without proper justification purely on commercial grounds, ignoring the impact of mining on eco-system." This comment from the committee came after it found 49 mines located within 10 km of national parks and sanctuaries.

The mines ministry said, "Fixing a cap on the production of mines will not be in the interest of the growth of the industry." It said the reserves of hematite iron ore in Goa in 1971 was 396 million tonnes (mt). After excavation of 500 mt in the last 29 years, Goa still had reserves of 1,150 mt (927 mt of hematite and 222.2 mt of magnetite ore) as on April 1, 2010," it added.

Heaping Blaming at the Goa government's door, the mines ministry said, "The power for grant of lease is vested with the state government and that the prerequisite for grant of mining lease is that the state government is satisfied that either the area has been prospected earlier, or that the existence of mineral content has been established to the state government by some other means other than prospecting, and that there is an approved mining plan.

But the court insisted to know who monitored the extraction of iron ore from the mines and whether there was a scientific method of accounting of extraction of ores.