New Delhi: The Supreme Court, Friday, asked the Odisha government to file an additional affidavit regarding the pending penalty on Narayani Sons Ltd, a mining company, for violation of environment norms and mining without consent to operate.
A three-judge bench of the apex court headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde and comprising justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian asked Odisha to file an affidavit in three weeks.
During the hearing, the counsel appearing for the lessee, NS Nandkarni, submitted to the court that he had paid all the dues along with interest to the state government for alleged environmental clearance violations and urged the court to grant him permission to lift and sell the extracted ore.
However, the counsel for Odisha, Kirti Mishra, submitted that the lessee hasn’t paid all the dues. Mishra sought time from the court to file an affidavit giving details of the dues pending on the lessee.
Meanwhile, advocate Prashant Bhushan opposed the prayer of the lessee to lift extracted ore citing that its lease licence had expired in 2010.
However, the lessee’s counsel referred to an affidavit filed by the state government in the apex court and said that the lease of Narayani Sons Ltd was extended till March 2020.
It is pertinent to mention here that the Supreme Court had imposed huge penalty on the mining firm for carrying out mining operations in Odisha without obtaining environmental clearance.