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5 Feb, 2014

Mining project approved in middle of India’s finest elephant reserve – Hindustan Times

Environment minister Veerappa Moily has obliged his Cabinet colleague and steel minister Beni Prasad Verma by approving an iron ore mining project in the middle of India’s best reserve for tuskers, Singhbhum Elephant Reserve in Jharkhand.

The Steel Authority of India’s Durgaiburu iron-ore mine in Saranda forest division of Jharkhand will now get 635 hectares of forest land after the nod by an environment ministry committee last month.

The ministry’s statutory Forest Advisory Committee, which only can sanction diversion of forest land for other uses, had cleared transfer of only 274 hectares for the project and made the diversion of the rest conditional on approval to a wildlife management plan.

Read the rest: Mining project in the middle of India’s finest elephant reserve cleared – Hindustan Times.