In a new twist to the alleged illegal mining by Reddy brothers’ Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC) in Ballery forests, the Supreme Court on Monday referred to the “green bench” a petition by a former company officer, seeking to become a “witness and approver” to show how they had “manipulated” the survey report on the leased mines in its favour.
OMC’s former deputy general manager V. Anjaneya had made two-fold prayer in his writ petition — to provide protection to him and allow him to become an approver — to assist the top court to show the actual facts about the alleged illegal mining by the company.
A vacation bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and C.K. Prasad advising Mr Anjaneya to approach Karnataka state Human Rights Commission for providing him protection as was given by it earlier but referred his petition for becoming the “approver and witness” to the forest bench, headed by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia. Justice Kapadia, who took over this month as CJI, had soon after indicated that all issues related to the mining in Ballery forests could be referred to the forest bench.
Earlier, a regular bench headed by former CJI K.G. Balakrishnan had allowed OMC and three other leaseholders to resume mining after receiving a report of the special survey team while permitting fresh demarcation of the leases with certain conditions.
Mr Anjaneya, who claimed that he had resigned after CBI raid in OMC mines in December last year, had sent his affidavit on the issue to the agency as well as Survey of India on “illegal mining” by the Reddy brothers’ company. He had given clear “evidence” about the mining outside the leased area in the name of AGK Mines, for which permit for 27.5 lakh tones of iron ore was obtained from the AP government. “However, the AGK mines by itself is not capable of producing even a single gram of commercial grade iron ore,” he said.