Two Anti-mining activist arrested by the Quepem police at the behest of the Mining Company

Quepem Police Friday arrested two brother and hardened anti mining activist from Colomba for commission of different section under the Indian penal Code. The Quepem police today morning at around 10.00 AM arrested Motes Antao at Tilamol Quepem while he was driving his truck.

The police stopped the truck which Moteus was driving and taken him in custody. The police sources informed herald that based on the complaint filed by one Ganesh Velip on 29/1/2009 over the incident taken place on 9/1/2009 the Quepem police booked Motes under section 353,504 and 506 r/w. 34 of IPC for giving abusive words to a court bailiff and taken him in custody today

However in the bail application moved by said Motes claimed that on the day of the alleged incident he was not yet all present at the residence. He claimed that he has been falsely booked at the instance of Fomento Mining Company whose summons the Court bailiff had gone to serve to the villagers.

Meanwhile the Quepem Police also piked up his brother Tedos Antao while he was waiting for a bus at Tilamol to go to work. The allegation on said Tedos was that he has restrained one Yeshwant Salunke Security guard of Hiralal Khodidas mine on 13/9/2008 and was booked under section 341, 323, 427, 506(ii) r/w. 34 of IPC.

That both brother Motes Antao and Tedos Antao has been released by the Judicial Magistrate Sanguem on personal bond of Rs.5000/- and upon furnishing like amount surety by both of them.

John Fernanades

Motesh Antao Slapped on his face three times by Goa Police at Quepem while in their custody

Motesh Antao Slapped on his face three times by Goa Police at Quepem while in their custody today. Motesh Antao spoke to http://www.mandgoa.blogspot.com/ after being released on bail. First time he was slapped by a policeman in plain clothes at Quepem Police Station and second and third time he was slapped on face while being taken for medical examination at government health centre in Curchorem.

The main reason why Motesh was attacked by police is best known to the Goa's men in Khaki that live off from public taxes and today they indulged in human rights violations.

According to Motesh Antao, the strategy of police given to them by minng company is to prevent people from Colamb to attend Public meetings in Panjim on March 23, 2009. There is widespread public protest against the State and Fomento mining company that State government has bended backward to protect Cidade de Goa five star hotel owned by Fomentos by specially coming out with Ordinance to avoid Supreme Court and High Court order to demolish the part of the Hotel for causing illegalities.

Police has planned to prevent Colamb villagers from attending Monday public meetings in various ways. The main way is to detain section of the key villagers active in the movement against mining at Police station the whole day. It may be recalled Ganv Ghor Rakhan Manch (GGRM) and Goa Bachao Abhiyan (GBA) has called for public meetings - one in the morning and second one in the evening - to protest the biases involved in the process of issuing of Ordinance few hours before the election code of conduct came into force in Goa. There is currently huge huge momentum building up against the Ordinance.

Sebastian Rodrigues

Goa Police, mining company targets Colamb village again

In the morning it was Motesh Antao who was arrested on the false charge of assaulting government servant and in the afternoon it is his brother Tedoz Antao who is arrested on the charges of assaulting security person of the mining company in his village. And, according to the latest information available police are planning to arrest six more Colamb villagers for their protest against open cast iron ore mining in the Colamb village for forcefully entering the Hiralal Khodidas mining lease operated by Fomento mining company.

Colamb village located in Goa's Sanguem taluka has 23 minng leases covering 1510 hecares of land out of total 1929 hectares of total village land. Sanguem Taluka has 20,000 hectares of land under mining leases. Tatal Goa's land under mining leases is 68,000 hectares.

Over the past few years resistence to mining is gradually building up due to multiple ill effect of the industry on health. Agriculture, livelihood options, forest, drying up of traditional water bodies, siltation of fields and rivers, blasting inside the mines causing cracking of houses etc. Goa is facing acute threat from the minng industry and some individuals and groups like GAKUVED are showing exemplary courage in standing up to the mining industry like never before. So the State in Goa is the state of panic and has launched Police witch hunt against those opposing mining.

Sebastian Rodrigues

Goa anti-mining activist Motesh Antao arrested on false criminal charges

Quepem Police took away Colamb villager and well-known anti-mining activist Motesh Antao from his truck and arrested him on the false charges of assault on government servant. He has been kept at police lock-up of Quepem Police Station since 10.00 am today March 20, 2009.

One government servant was abused in colamb village some months ago while he he was distributing Court injunction orders against the villagers. Most interesting part is that Motes was not even present in the village that day. Government servant went ahead and filed police complaint against Motes Antao - clearly a handiwork of the marauding mining company in the village that is systematically destroying western ghats forests and livelihoods of the communities that has settled in the areas for thousands of years.

Motesh is one of the active voices of mining terrorism in Goa and has been frequently targeted by the mining industry. This is the latest instance.

Please call up the Quepem Police Station at the phone number 0832-2662253 and lodge your protest against the mining inspired arrests and police harassment of the villagers in Colamb and demand withrawal of the false cases against Motesh Antao and his immediate release.

Sebastian Rodrigues

The "Cidade Ordinance"

GOVERNMENT OF GOA
DEPARTMENT OF LAW AND JUDICIARY
LEGAL AFFAIRS DIVISION

NOTIFICATION
8/2/2009-LA


The Land Acquisition (Goa Amendment)Ordinance, 2009 (Ordinance No. 2 of 2009), which has been promulgated by the Governor of Goa on 28-2-2009, is hereby published for general information of the public.

Sharad G.Marathe.,
Joint Secretary (Law).
Porvorim,
2nd March, 2009.


THE LAND ACQUISITION (GOA AMENDMENT) ORDINANCE, 2009
(ORDINANCE NO 2 OF 2009)

Promulgated by the Governor of Goa in the sixtiethYear of the Republic of India

An Ordinance further to amend the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (Central Act 1 of 1894), as in force in the State of Goa.


Whereas the Legislative Assembly of the State of Goa is not in Session and the Governor of Goa is satisfied that the circumstances exist which render it necessary for him to take immediate action.


N o w, therefore, in exercise of the powers conferred by clause (1) of Article 213 of the Constitution of India, the Governor of Goa is pleased to promulgate the following Ordinance,namely


1. Short Title and commencement: (1) This Ordinance may be called the Land Acquisition (Goa Amendment) Ordinance, 2009.(2) It shall be deemed to have come into force with effect from 15-10-1964, unless any other specific date is indicated in the body of this Ordinance.


2. Amendment of section 41— In section 41 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 (Central Act 1 of 1894), as in force in the State of Goa, after clause (5), the following clauses, shall be inserted,namely.—


“(6) Notwithstanding anything contained in the judgment, decree or an order of any Court,Tribunal or any other authority, any development done or construction undertaken in pursuance of the agreement entered under this section between the Government and the Company on the basis of the statutory approvals like permissions granted by the Planning and Development Authority, Eco-Development Council, Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority, Municipal Council, Panchayat,including renewals and deviations thereof approved and regularized, and all permissions obtained by the company and all the buildings constructed by the Company and all the proceedings taken by the competent authorities to issue the license or permission for undertaking construction, shall be deemed to have been validly done and have always been undertaken in accordance with the said agreement.


(7) Notwithstanding anything contained in the judgment, decree, or order of any Court, Tribunal or any other Authority the appropriate Government shall be at liberty to modify the agreement executed under this section between the Government and the Company on mutually agreed terms in furtherance of the purpose for which the land was acquired, by publication of the modified agreement in the Official Gazette, and any such modifications made in the agreement,shall come into force from the date on which the original agreement with the Company was executed under this section and any action taken or things done under the modified agreement, shall for all purposes be deemed and to have always been done or taken in accordance with the original agreement.


(8) Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, decree or order of any Court, Tribunal or any other authority, if in any agreement entered into between the Government and the Companythere be any clause prohibiting the Company to construct any buildings or structures in the acquired land, such clause shall stand deleted with retrospectives effect from 15-10-1964.


(9) No suit or other proceeding shall be instituted, maintained or continued in any Court or before any Tribunal or other authority for cancellation of such permission or for demolitionof buildings which were constructed after obtaining the permissions from the Statutory Authorities and have been validated under this section, or for questioning the validity of any action taken or things done or permission granted in pursuance of the original agreement as modified and no court shall enforce or recognized any decrees, judgment or orders declaring and such action taken or things done under the original agreement as modified, as invalid or unlawful”.


Place: Raj Bhavan, Dr.Shivinder Singh Sidhu,
Dona Paula. Governor of Goa.
Date: 28 February, 2009.

Green signal perils

By Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon in Hindustan Times on March 04, 2009

Since 1994, the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification has put into place an environment clearance process for a range of development and industrial projects listed in its schedule. This process requires, amongst other things, the preparation of an EIA report and public consultation. This process has, over the years, been reduced to administrative formalities, to say the least. The hurried pace of clearances, shoddy EIAs, rigged public consultation and appraisal procedures have been facilitated by unabated dilutions of the law itself.

If the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has its way again, then any industry seeking to modernise or expand its operations can self-certify that its plans will not lead to an increase in the pollution load, and escape the regulatory net. This is one of the most critical amendments proposed on January 19, 2009, to an already butchered environment clearance framework. This self-certification option ignores a persistent problem: that of ensuring projects’ compliance with environmental clearance conditions. There are many examples of industrial units being allowed to expand despite a poor environmental record, even with existing levels of the MoEF’s monitoring. So this new and complete exemption will be the highest form of legally sanctioned environmental injustice.

Activities like dredging and dumping of material within port limits are to be exempted from public consultations. Such activities affect coastal and marine ecosystems and livelihoods in irreversible ways. This exemption is a continuation of the withholding of critical environmental information. Over the years, the Ministry’s response has, in a myriad ways, ridiculed and limited the scope of the public hearing through a series of exemptions and dilutions. This proposed amendment is no exception.

Industrial areas below 500 hectares which do not host the activities identified in the notification schedule are proposed to be exempted. A change in land use of 500 hectares, due to any activity, anywhere, will result in a host of environmental and social impacts — access will be curtailed, livelihoods will be lost and existing forms of biodiversity will have to make way for the change. We may lose farms, beaches, forest, wetlands, pastures or just open spaces.

Real estate development projects continue to have it easy. The 2006 notification had exempted them from almost the entire regulatory process. Now, the proposed amendments have widened the scope of exemptions to them, based on size. Projects less than 50,000 square metres or with a built-up area of less than 100 hectares will not need to procure a clearance after assessing environmental impacts. Keeping such land use change proposals out of the regulatory framework means that we don’t even want to know what we might lose or what impact such changes might have. It does not, as the Ministry would like us to think, mean that these changes in land use are without any impact. This proposal reflects the basic rot in the MoEF’s ways of thinking, where impacts are assessed only through the use of environmental expertise based on pollution standards.

Another proposal seeks to dispense with the stages of scoping and drafting of the terms of reference for the EIA reports of ‘B’ category projects for a period of three years. This is to ensure that projects aren’t held up due to the administrative workload of the bureaucracy. Speedy clearances, which were the order of the 2006 amendments, continue to rule.
Interestingly, discussions between the PMO (holding charge of the MoEF) and the Ministry have been on since 2007. Despite the Right to Information Act, which requires all policy formulation to involve the people, this draft notification was posted on the Ministry’s website only at the fag end, when any suggestions for fundamental change will not be entertained.

(Kanchi Kohli and Manju Menon are members of Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group)

Mining truck are parked between 1 to 2 PM at POPE JOHN XXIII High School

Mining truck are constantly parked infront of Pope John XXIII High school between 1 to 2 PM inpite of the Dy-Collector of Quepem guidelines dated 26/11/2008 issued to the mining companies and the mining contractor. The mining truck are being parked infront of the nose of the Quepem police.

More on The Cidade Ordinance and Mining...

The now infamous ‘Cidade Ordinance’ by which Goa’s elected representatives have made a mockery of The Supreme Court and made their fellow Goans the laughing stock of the country, is a clear indication that Goa’s elected representatives have nothing but their own interests in mind.

Some now say that the shelf life of an ordinance is 6 months and to become a law it will have to be ratified by the Legislative Assembly. Some feel it will be opposed, but, and this is a big but, what happens if the same people come to power? Or if not them, perhaps a few new faces even worse than them?

Moreover, one should not forget that the Government of India and, more importantly, the strong big business lobby within it, only see Goa’s importance in terms of the foreign exchange its mud fetches from being exported to China. It is sad that we have Goans who will willingly do this, but sadder still that we have a Ministry of Environment and Forests that has turned its back on the precious Western Ghats and ceded shallow victory to those in the mad race to pip China to the final post. If there is a toss-up between agriculture, ecotourism, social forestry, rainwater harvesting and shall we say, mining, there is no reason to doubt what the choice will be.

When Indian corporate bigwigs smirk and say that China and India have come out of this mess smelling like roses, they accept their new roles as destroyers of the environment with glee. One would need a lot more space to document what China is doing to vast tracts of land in Africa, in return for which, by guise of ‘infrastructure’, they provide roads and build the malls that will send cheap, badly-manufactured Chinese goods.

India is no better. We have hit Africa too playing catch-up with the Chinese and working with governments there no different from the 40 persons we have in Goa, paying money left, right and centre, because big industry takes pfrecedence over the natural environment and other forms of non-human life. Says who and with what assurance?

With governmental backing, approval and support, The Jindals for instance have invested in Trinidad to put up a steel mill threatening mangrove forests and aquatic life; in Bolivia the government has given them 600 acres of private land to mine for iron ore, in exchange for their $2.1 billion investment. When America’s auto-industry belches after it has a full meal, don’t even think of how much the Jindals stand to make.

Never forget too that the Cidade de Goa is built from the huge profits Timblos made and continue to make even as this is being written from taking away Goa’s greenery and replacing it with waste mud and pools of stagnant water. What reason will the Government of India have to overrule this farce of legalizing what is obviously illegal, when they want the Timblos to export ore?

Those interested in how even the Supreme Court can favour industrial imperatives over an environment that includes in this instance, tribal peoples and their beliefs, can refer to the ruling that gave the infamous Vedanta Mining Corporation clearance to rip the forests.
If one discounts the small-time mining contractors who are doing the dirty work for the Timblos, we have just a handful of ‘traditional’ mining ‘barons’, men, who let us never ever forget, sided with the colonialist and Fascist government till the very end. It was a pro-mining Goan government, which, at the behest of a mine-owning Chief Minister, legalized colonial mining leases intended to systematically decimate Goa.

There is no way that I can believe that these same families are cash-strapped. Notice that not one of them has asked for a bail-out. Apart from their personal reserves that keep them (and ten other generations) in luxury, their reserves would have to be huge.

The global recession is actually a wake-up call to the entire earth and to all the people who care about its survival and this is where our mining barons need to put a stop to their greed, resynchronize their postulates and BE the CHANGE! Think of ways of how they diversify to environmentally-friendly industries…

To put it simply, they need to hire the best possible brains to help them think out of the box. To put this conversely, if they had the ‘vision’ of a better Goa, they would temper their greed and follow the law.

A little bird tells me that one of the Timblos is desperately calling up his old friends in Goa, almost in tears, saying that his friends have deserted him, that no one talks to him any more, that they avoid him like he has the plague. Some would say that this Timblo’s tragedy is not too different from that of Macbeth, the grief of an individual whose eyes were bigger than his stomach. From the other side, from where the woods once used to be before Timblo machinery got to work, where the villagers of Ambaulim, Kawrem, Maina and Collomb stand in the thick of the mining dust, it is a tragedy so monumental it can only be comprehended by those who see it on a day to day basis.

The foothills of the Western Ghats are disappearing. Even as this is being written more than 600 trucks are moving out of this area daily while the Timblos of course, wonder why the whole of Goa now sees them with the contempt they deserve. They can hold their soirees and their cocktail parties and flirt with the rich and famous, but when push comes to shove, thanks to the internet campaigns and various forums, everyone knows how many pieces of silver were palmed and by whom and for what.

The same Timblo who now grieves that those not in the mining fraternity are repelled by him, should know, if he has a heart at all, that this damage can be repaired. For that to happen though he would have to be able to see beyond the end of his wife’s diamond-studded nose.

Hartman de Souza to e-group western-ghats@googlegroups.com on March 10, 2009.

Carmen Miranda with pictures of diversion of Mahadayi River: work in progress

Dear friends,

Soon after our Western Ghats meeting in Goa last February, I had the opportunity to visit the canal work being done in Karnataka, to divert the waters from the river Mahadeyi from Goa. I was shocked to see the size of the operation - it is a huge canal, but it has not yet connected to the river. However there is already a lot of water in this unfinished canal so I presume they have already dug down to the water table in vast areas, as shown on the attached photo. If this diversion is allowed to go ahead, Goa doesn't stand a chance of getting much water from this river in the future. I hope Goa does not end up high and dry!

Carmen Miranda in e-mail to e-group western-ghats@googlegroups.com on March 09, 2009.

Mining inside the Selaulim dam reservoir

According to reports reaching from Curpem tow of the legislators of Goa Legislative Assembly has began mining inside the Selaulim Water Dam in Samguem. The Selaulim water dam supplies water to over 50% of Goa's population that includes Salcete, Marmagoa and Quepem Talukas. South Goa tourism industry as well as Margao City is dependent upon the water supply from Selaulim Water Dam.

Shantilal mining lease inside the water dam operated by Salgaonkar mining company with India's third largest legislator Anil Salgaokar with declared assets of whopping Rs.92 Crores - elected from Sanvordem Constituency in South Goa - is one of the responsibly irresponsible of the Goa's MLAs that is targeting Goa's Selaulim Dam.

The other colluding MLA is Joaquim Alemao who is also Goa's current Urban Development Minister in Digambar Kamat Cabinet. He is a contrator to operate Salgaokar's business through his firm Raissa mining company.

Salgaokar-Alemao mining nexus has been directing targeting the Selaulim dam from the later half of the first week of February 2009. The operations has been going on amidst tight private security and forest cover on the banks of Selauim dam is already chopped down by this brutal action by the two MLAs and their greed.

It is not yet clear as to what is their source of authority to target Selaulim Dam in this heinous manner.

Sebastian Rodrigues