Samaj Parivarthan Samudaya (SPS), the main petitioner in the public interest petition on illegal mining in Karnataka, has appealed to the Supreme Court for scrapping of all mining leases in Category ‘A’, which fall in the forest areas in the three districts of Bellary, Chitradurga and Tumkur. In a submission filed to the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) of the Supreme Court, in response to the SC direction on August 17, 2012, the non-government organisation has appealed for the cancellation of mining leases in Category B and C and impose suitable fine on them. “If such cancellation and prosecution is not done, then that defeats the major object of the painstaking survey conducted by the joint team of all the leases. I request you to kindly give a serious consideration to these issues as you have done in the past,” Prashant Bhushan, Counsel for the petitioners said in the 32 page submission made to CEC on August 20, 2012. The Supreme Court is resuming hearing in the case on August 23 and 24, 2012. “Through this letter, we would like to raise certain fundamental issues and suggest a viable future plan for rehabilitation of the area and sustainable mining that does not damage the environment,” he said in the submission. The SPS, which is consistently arguing that the de-reservation of over 11,000 sq km forest land for mining by former chief minister of Karnataka S M Krishna was in clear violation of Forest Act, strongly urged CEC to “declare Karnataka Government’s cabinet decision as null and void. “It is also important that CEC must insist that a comprehensive reclamation and rehabilitation (R&R) must be first fully implemented on the ground to the satisfaction of all including Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) and CEC, before any further steps are taken to resume mining. Otherwise, the miners would have no incentive to complete the R&R. The R&R would of course be implemented at the cost of the mining lease holder,” the submission said. SPS has also appealed to expunge the reference by Dehradun-based Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) in its report, for conducting a study to bring in superior underground mining technologies in the Western Ghats to extract magnetite ore, as recommended by the CEC. The SPS sought probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in to the “high-level conspiracy between public representatives, public servants and the private persons that allowed illegal mining to take place at such a massive scale and appealed to direct the Karnataka government to initiate disciplinary action against the officials, who allowed illegal mining to take place at such a massive scale. The Dharwad-based petitioners have also appealed to the Supreme Court to take into consideration the cap on mining at 30 million metric tonnes per annum from all three districts and the royalty of ore should be based on market rate. It also requested for constituting a monitoring committee to ensure that the said mandate is carried out in actuality. On the question of royalty, the rate must be fixed at at least 40 per cent of the market value of the ore as the resource belongs to the people. It sought direction to collect penalty at five times the market rate of illegal ore being mined from the Category ‘C’ and ‘B’, mining leases.