While Orissa vigilance sleuths and mines department officials are scratching their heads trying to find out the extent and dimensions of the mining scam, official documents reveal that the magnitude of the scam could be anything over Rs 14000 crore.

The Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court headed by former bureaucrat PV Jayakrishnan would soon start investigating the violation of forest laws following a petition by Orissa-based journalist Rabi Das.

However, CEC chairman Jayakrishnan said the panel has not got the formal notification of the probe order as yet. "We will decide about the modalities of the probe and the dates after we see the notification," he told The Indian Express.

But the fact is that the scam goes beyond violation of forest laws only. Evidence available with The Indian Express shows the real scam was mining in excess of the limits set by the authorities. This violated the existing environmental laws.

Documents brought under the RTI Act showed that over last 6-7 years more than dozen leading mining and steel companies dug out excessive quantities of iron, chromite and manganese ores in wanton disregard of existing laws and limits. It’s no secret they could do it due to lax supervision of officials of the Orissa Pollution Control Board, Indian Bureau of Mines, state mines department, forest department, district collector and Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Any mining company before digging up even a handful of earth in the ore-rich areas has to obtain a Consent to Operate (CTO) certificate from the Orissa Pollution Control Board which stipulates the amount of ore that can be mined in a year. The limit is specified with an eye on collateral environmental damage that mining brings as the waste and overburden (the earth that needs to be excavated for extracting the ore) is normally 3-5 times of the actual mineral.

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