SHILLONG: The state government has written to Union Ministry of Environment and Forest on July 28 to hold a meeting to discuss the finalization of mining plan, mining policy and mining guidelines.
Moreover, the state government is also inclined to seek the intervention of NGT to extend the transportation of already extracted coal.
Earlier, during the last hearing on July 21, NGT had pulled up the Union Ministry for seeking opinion of experts instead of the ministry preparing the required mining plan.
The NGT had also directed the Ministry of Environment and Forest, Ministry of Coal and the Meghalaya government to hold a meeting to finalise the mining plan and submit a report before the tribunal since the mining activities were at a standstill.
“A week after the NGT order, the state government has written to Union Ministry of Environment and Forest to organize the meeting at the earliest due to the urgency of the matter”, Supreme Court lawyer and state counsel Ranjan Mukherjee said on Saturday.
The next hearing on the matter will be held on August 30. The state government will also file an affidavit before NGT on or before August 4 on the methodology to be followed in dealing with the already extracted 30 lakh metric tonnes of coal worth Rs 1461 crore
“We are keen to have an interim relief from NGT for the transportation of already extracted coal from October 1 this year to May 31, 2017″, Mukherjee said.
The state government has already collected Rs 700 crore as royalty from the extracted coal from February 23, 2015 to April 15, 2016.
The government hopes to get huge amount of royalty by transporting the remaining coal”, Mukherjee added.
