NEW DELHI: A controversy erupted on Wednesday after Congress MP KC Venugopal accused the govt of removing a Lok Sabha question on the auction of 13 offshore mining blocks around Arabian and Andaman seas at the last minute, alleging it wanted to evade answering if socio-economic impact assessment (SIA) was done prior to the auction, which would have exposed its “dubious mining policy”.Terming it a “procedural manipulation” by the Centre, he said the question, listed by BJP MPs Balabhadra Majhi and Aparajita Sarangi, was the first starred one for the Question Hour on Wednesday. As released by him, the question asked the govt to name the shortlisted candidates for the 13 mining blocks, the number of fishing villages within 20 nautical miles of each block, and if SIA was done for each case.The senior MP said the govt had uploaded the question in the public domain but it “miraculously vanished” ahead of the proceedings. Various MPs have been raising the said issue, highlighting the environmental dangers, the absence of SIA and the opaque auction process, and he himself had flagged it through a calling attention motion in the budget session, Venugopal said.“Today, we were expecting the govt to offer some clarity and accountability. But shockingly, after uploading the question list in the public domain, the question was mysteriously withdrawn at the last minute without any explanation,” he said, adding, “What forced this abrupt deletion? Who is the govt trying to protect? Was it because the govt’s dubious offshore mining policy was about to be exposed in broad daylight?”
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