Scrap exemption for critical mineral mining

With environmentalists raising alarm bells, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin on Friday demanded that the Union Government withdraw the exemption given to mining critical and atomic minerals from the purview of public consultation, maintaining that it is unacceptable.

- STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE Chennai, 12 September

"Dispensing with public consultations amounts to an impermissible executive amendment of law and is therefore unsustainable. Policy changes of such significance must be deliberated transparently in Parliament and State Legislatures, with due consultation of the States and the Public. Proceeding otherwise would run counter to the spirit of cooperative federalism and to the democratic ethos of our country," he said in a Demi Official (DO) letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He drew attention to the potential impact of the changes through the Office Memorandum (OM) of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and called for its immediate rollback.