Shaving of Forest in Colamb

With active collusion between Forest department and mining companies forest cover in Colamb is being shaved to clear way for the mining industry to penetrate deep into the ground to extract iron ore and manganese. These pictures are from A.X.P. Palondicar mining lease 17/49. It is designated land as "Government Forest" by Sawant and Karapurkar committee report covering survey number 72 and declared as "No development zone under Goa Regional Plan 2021. Miners in Goa cares a hoot for the regional plans or for the laws for they have they have plenty of currency grease to service Indian Politicians and bureaucrats at all the levels. This deforestation began on August o4 2009 and subsequently continued. Mining operations has began too. Here are pictures clicked on October 18 2009.

Sebastian Rodrigues with picture inputs from Devidas Gaonkar