Scrap Consultation Exemption for Mineral Mining: Stalin to PM

TAMIL Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to immediately withdraw the Office Memorandum (OM) issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoE-FCC), which exempts the requirement of public consultation for all mining projects involving atomic and strategic minerals notified in the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act.

- EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE @ Chennai

He pointed out that the OM also directed all such projects to be henceforth appraised at the central level, irrespective of the lease area. "The present OM, by dispensing with public consultations, amounts to an impermissible executive amendment of law and is therefore unsustainable," he said. Dispensing with such consultation, Stalin warned, would deprive coastal communities of their right to raise c