PANAJI: Once hazy with swirling ferrous dust and buzzing with excavators, JCBs, trucks and human activity, Goa's laterite-red mining pits after one monsoon season have transformed into beautiful but eerie, placid lakes. And yet ironically, villagers who live in the vicinity of mines in the Western Ghats now filled with millions of gallons of rainwater, find themselves deprived of water now that mining has come to a standstill.“Our trucks and machinery are idle as are our garages. Fomento Resources sent us thirty tanker-trips of water a day, now it is down to three. It has also stopped the bus service it ran for schoolkids for villages around here,” says Ulhas Naik, panch of the Ambeudak, a village which lies near two such large water-logged mines.Nine months after the Supreme Court ordered all iron ore mines shut in Goa, the future of more than one-tenth of the state’s population who have been dependent on mining for their livelihood remains uncertain. Thousands of them are now headed for Delhi for a three-day protest Further delay in resuming mining operations in the state will cost BJP , which leads a coalition government in the state, warned Puti Gaonkar , president of the Goa Mining People’s Front (GMPF). “BJP won’t be allowed into talukas in the mining belt if this issue is not resolved,” he said. “They can forget coming back to power for the next ten years.”Gaonkar alleged the state government is not making genuine efforts to renew leases so as to enable auctioning of the leases to “mining giants such as Adani and JSW”.GMPF’s three-day protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, is planned to coincide with the start of Parliament’s winter session. Maharastrawadi Gomantak Party, whose support helped BJP come back to power in 2017, has threatened to withdraw support if mining does not resume soon.In 2014, the Supreme Court’s green bench had declared as illegal the widely used “deemed to be extended” clause in mining leases, which allowed mining to continue decades after leases had lapsed, allowing mine owners only one renewal as a matter of right. Subsequent grants needed to be justified or granted as fresh leases. Accordingly, while lifting a two-year mining ban on April 21, 2014, the top court found almost all leases, including those of Vedanta Resources’ Sesa Goa, Fomento Resources and VS Salgaocar, to have lapsed in November 2007.Four years later, in February this year, the SC reiterated this stand, setting aside 88 renewals granted by the state, leaving the Manohar Parrikar-led government with just six weeks to shut all mining operations.Between the two SC orders, the Centre had made auction mandatory for grant of natural resources.After some dilly-dallying, the state government has sought an amendment to the norms that will extend existing leases (declared lapsed by the SC) to 2037, highlighting the peculiarities of Goan mining such as low grade ore, and small Portuguese era mines whose surface rights are held not necessarily by the state but by individuals. All political parties in the state have backed the move, passing a unanimous resolution in the state assembly in August.The central government however has been noncommittal.Parrikar’s illness has made it difficult for the state to lobby persuasively with the Centre, state power minister Nilesh Cabral has conceded. All three Parliamentarians from the state belong to BJP, and alliance partner Goa Forward Party leader and agriculture minister Vijai Sardesai of Goa Forward holds them responsible for “lack of transparency”.In 1987, the government converted concessions with patrilineal rights granted by the Portuguese into leases. The Goa, Daman & Diu Mining Leases (Abolition of Mining Concessions and Declaration as Mining Leases) Act was made applicable retrospectively from December 20, 1961 or the day after Goa was liberated from Portuguese rule.Parrikar’s government now wants the Centre to introduce an amendment that makes the abolition act apply prospectively, from the day it was promulgated, that is, May 23, 1987. With this, and the deemed tenure of 50 years offered under the amended Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act of 2015, the life of Goa’s mines will extend to 2037.Parrikar wrote to the mines ministry last month, arguing that the state had pointed out the need to “harmonise” both acts soon after Modi’s amendment to mining laws in January of 2015. The need to align Goa’s mining sector with the rest of the country’s would have been necessary even if the SC, in its February order, had not set aside his renewals, the chief minister wrote.People still recall how Parrikar came to power in 2012 campaigning against illegal mining and selective renewals under his predecessor Digambar Kamat’s watch.A metallurgist by training, Parrikar had often complained it was the state’s prerogative to fix things. “Chori Goa mein hua hai, chori Goa sarkar ka maal ka hua hai, how was it anyone else’s business?” he’d say. Minerals do belong to the state and thus royalties accrue to it. However, the power to legislate major minerals such as iron ore and coal, rests with the Centre.In the wake of a Centre appointed Commission’s damning reports on illegal mining, Parrikar had rushed to suspend permits, setting an ominous domino in motion, which eventually led the UPA-2 government at the Centre to withdraw all environment clearances and the SC banning all mining activity in 2012.To raise funds, the state began collecting stamp duty ostensibly to renew leases, but began executing them only in November of 2014, citing an August 2014 Bombay HC judgment that directed them to do so. Parrikar and his successor Laxmikant Parsekar renewed 88 leases till January 2015, when Modi’s ordinance introducing auctions of mineral rights was promulgated. These renewals, the SC concluded in February 2018, were executed “in undue haste, sacrificing the rule of law for the benefit of the mining lease holders”.