SHILLONG: In protest against the failure of the State Government to complete the task assigned by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on the transportation of the extracted coal, the State Co-ordination Committee of Coal Owners’, Miners’ and Dealers’ Forum has called a dawn-to-dusk bandh across the State on August 6.
“We are unhappy with the failure of the Government committee under the Chairmanship of Director of Mines R.P. Marak to complete its task as directed by the Tribunal,” the forum said in a statement on Sunday, while adding that they were left with no option but to call the bandh on August 6 throughout the State as a mark of protest against the State Government’s inaction on the issue.
Emergency services, milk men, media, people attending patients in hospitals will be exempted from the purview of the bandh, the forum said.
The forum also took strong exception to the government’s report to the NGT that quantification of the extracted coal could not be done owing to dysfunctional coal weighing machines.
It may be mentioned that on June 9 the NGT, while enforcing a complete ban on mining activities in Meghalaya constituted a committee comprising of officials from the Mining Department, Directorate of Mineral Resources (DMR) and State Pollution Control Board to assess the quantity of extracted coal for transportation.
The NGT constituted the committee to assess the quantity of extracted coal and regulate its transportation.
The NGT during its hearing on August 1 had expressed strong reservation over the failure of the committee and decided to constitute a new committee after scrapping the earlier committee headed by Meghalaya Director of Mines, R.P. Marak.
The furum, meanwhile, also stated that the coal miners, through their learned counsels, had argued in the NGT Special Circuit Bench, Eastern Zone held in Shillong that the NGT constituted committee and the state government had overlooked into several aspects of the earlier order passed by it.
During the last hearing on August 1, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) refused to lift the ban on rat-hole coal mining in Meghalaya, saying that it could not permit economic interests to gain preference over the right to life.
The next hearing on the three applications will be held in Shillong on October 7 and 8.