The Supreme Court will commence the final hearing only in January 2012 on the petition by the Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC) challenging the withdrawal of environment clearance by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) for a Sterlite mining project in the State. This comes even as OMC had sought an early hearing in the matter.
OMC had said that the MoEF did not give the mandatory notice to the parties while taking a decision to withdraw the environmental clearance for the Vedanta Group company’s bauxite mining project in Niyamgiri.