New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday pulled up the BJP government in Goa and scrapped all mining leases granted in the state in an arbitrary manner and directed the government to grant fresh mining leases.

Giving this ruling on a PIL filed by Goa Foundation, through advocate Prashant Bhushan, a Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta said that all existing lessees would have to stop mining by March 16 and fresh leases granted through auction.

The top court in its April 2014 judgment has stated that all leases had expired in 2007 and fresh leases had to be given. Goa Government had granted 88 renewals to mining leases in December 2014 and January 2015 with retrospective effect from 2007 for 20 years, just before Mining law was amended which mandatorily provides for auction.

The bench directed mining companies to wind up their operations by March 16 and asked the government to initiate bidding process for granting fresh mining lease to companies. It ordered the setting up of a special investigation team (SIT) to inquire into the matter and recover the penalty from the lease-holders on account of illegal mining of iron ores The SIT will comprise chartered accountants as well for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of penalty to be recovered.

It slammed the State government for renewing mining leases of the companies in violation of the law and the apex court’s earlier order. It said that the fresh licences would have to be now granted by the authorities through an auction process, as stipulated under the new law.

Writing the judgment Justice Lokur said the sole motive of mining lease holders seems to be to make profits (no matter how) and the attitude seems to be that if the rule of law is required to be put on the backburner, so be it. Unfortunately, the State is unable to firmly stop violations of the law and other illegalities, perhaps with a view to maximize revenue, but without appreciating the long-term impact of this indifference.

The court said another excuse generally put forth by the State is that of development, conveniently forgetting that development must be sustainable and equitable development and not otherwise.