Meghalaya govt encouraging illegal coal mining, says NGO

GUWAHATI

A Meghalaya-based rights group has accused the alliance authorities within the State of encouraging illegal coal mining in contempt of a Supreme Court order.

This follows a scathing assault by the Opposition Congress within the 60-member Meghalaya Assembly over the difficulty of illegal mining and transportation of coal as Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma insisted a number of stringent measures had been taken, together with circumstances registered towards some 2,000 folks for flouting the ban.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had in April 2014 imposed the ban on rat-hole coal mining in Meghalaya. The State authorities later claimed tonnes of already extracted coal mendacity round varied mining websites wanted to be transported to forestall the native atmosphere from being polluted.

“Instead of objectively identifying the volume and location of extracted coal, the State government sought self-declaration from the coal miners for receiving mineral transportation challan to transport and sell their coal,” the NGO Thma U Rangli-Juki stated on Wednesday.

The extracted coal amount was reportedly inflated. The NGT subsequently ordered the federal government to arrange a committee for issuing crucial tips concerning identification of such “extracted coal”.

The committee headed by former Chief Secretary K.S. Kropha discovered that the quantity of extracted coal by the miners was both non-existent or had been inflated.

Coal miners had in December 2018 instructed the Supreme Court, which had upheld the NGT ban, that 1.77 lakh metric tonnes of extracted coal had been left to be transported.

“How was it that the Secretary to Meghalaya’s Mining and Geology Department filed an additional affidavit in the court on April 10, 2019, claiming there was 32.57 lakh metric tonnes of coal yet to be transported?” the NGO requested.

It added that challans had been issued illegally and the federal government used the COVID-19 lockdowns and partial lockdowns to facilitate illegal transportation of coal.

The Congress too sought an evidence from the State authorities in regards to the mismatch within the figures of extracted coal quantity. The social gathering’s MLA George Lyngdoh requested the place the vans carrying coal had been coming from if the coal mining operations, as the federal government claimed, had not resumed because the ban and greater than 32 lakh metric tonnes had been nonetheless ready to be auctioned for transporting.

Mr. Sangma defended the determine, blaming the Congress for “creating” the 32 lakh metric tonnes throughout its rule. He stated the whole technique of assessing the coal was submitted to the NGT however the auctioning needed to be delayed due to lack of approval from the related authorities.

The Chief Minister, nevertheless, admitted that the federal government had been going through the challenges of illegal coal mining and transportation. “We have filed almost 2,000 cases in the past five years,” he stated, including that the federal government had taken steps equivalent to issuing high-security challans with particular ink and hologram, forming a taskforce and joint patrolling of police and mining officers at completely different places within the State.