Supreme Court criticises Goa, Vedanta’s delayed review pleas in mining case

Court dismisses review petitions on merits as well.

A Supreme Court Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has slammed the Goa government and Vedanta for “preferring” to file their review petitions against a February 2018 judgment after the retirement of two judges who authored it. A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta, in their February 7, 2018, judgment, cancelled 88 mining leases, which were renewed by the BJP government in Goa in 2015 to “benefit private mining leaseholders”. Their 102-page judgment had traced the “rapacious and rampant exploitation” of Goa's fragile ecology by private mining lease holders, whose sole motive was to make profits, for years. The verdict had noted how these leases were hastily renewed by the State in 2014 with retrospective effect from 2007, just in the nick of time before an amended Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act made auction of leases mandatory to mine notified minerals like iron ore.