Lafarge moved nearer to operating its mining lease for limestone from the Meghalaya hills after the Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court the company has deposited Rs 75.06 crore in a corpus to finance compensatory afforestation. The corpus is under a Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority, set up by the environment ministry.
An affidavit filed by the ministry said the company has complied with a direction from the Supreme Court. The court was deciding on a plan by the cement company to divert 116 hectare of forest land for its mine, which would supply limestone to its plant in Bangladesh. The Centre was asked to take a final decision under the Forest Conservation Act 1980 for the revised environmental clearance, taking into consideration ?all the conditions?.
According to the affidavit, Lafarge Umiam Mining Pvt Ltd, through its letter on July 15, has informed that around Rs 1.32 crore for compensatory afforestation, Rs 1.07 crore as the cost to raise penal compensatory afforestation and more than Rs 72.66 crore or five times the normal NPV with interest at 9% per annum from April 1, 2007, till date has been deposited in the adhoc CAMPA account.
The CAMPA funds, collected from companies in lieu of diverting forest land for non-forest purposes, is being utilised for conservation, protection and management of wildlife and its habitat, both within the core and buffer zones of protected areas.
Besides, Lafarge had informed that it ?has furnished an unconditional and irrevocable bank guarantee in favour of Meghalaya government for an amount not exceeding Rs 1.20 lakh, being the sum of Rs 90 per tonne of the limestone mined from the date on which mining commenced, to be deposited with SPV,? the affidavit filed by Haris Beeran stated. According to the ministry, an expert appraisal committee has also observed that the conditions and environmental safeguards stipulated were comprehensive enough to mitigate the adverse impacts of the project and protect environment, if implemented effectively.
The ministry had accorded in-principle approval for the diversion of 116.58 hectares of forest land under the 1980 Act on April 22. Earlier, on February 5, the court had restrained Lafarge from continuing mining operations for extracting limestone in Meghalaya to manufacture cement at the Lafarge Surma Cement project at Chhatak, Sunamganj, in Bangladesh.