Recently, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) probe has found that software was tweaked to clear blocks in dense forests for cold blocks auction.
These dense forests are known as ‘No-Go’ areas or forests.
Key takeaways
Investigation details:
Since 2015, 9 out of 49 blocks cleared for coal mining were in ‘No-Go’ areas, or regions that were once classified by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change as containing very dense forests and hence closed to coal mining.
In 2020, of the 41 blocks put up for auction, 21 feature in the original No-Go list.
A two stage e-auction is being adopted for the allocation of these mines.
It is a part of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.
It was also revealed through RTI that 67% of the mines auctioned since 2015 were not operational yet.
From 2015-2020, the government tried to auction 112 mines, but succeeded in only 42 cases.
Several potential coal reserves are located in dense forests particularly in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
The government determined which of them were too ecologically important to touch, and which were amenable to be opened up using ‘decision support system software’.
In some cases, results of the software evaluation were tweaked to make ‘No-Go’ land into ‘Go-forests’.
