Patricia Mukhim
Gone are the days when Governments were afraid of Assembly sessions because an aggressive Opposition grill them for their acts of omission and commission. Today the sessions are boring and insipid because the Opposition benches are occupied by MLAs who don’t do their homework and don’t believe in getting accurate and detailed information through the RTI route on several government transactions that stink of a scam. The Leader of the Opposition who should be thundering in the Assembly and getting his flock together to strategise on who will take up which issue, is instead voicing the concerns only of the border areas which fall within his constituency. Most Opposition MLAs rely on media reports for speaking (not raising their voices) in the Assembly.
The Treasury bench on the other hand is headed by a belligerent Chief Minister who also informs himself of goings-on in every department. Rebutting media reports about wrongdoings vis-à-vis transfer of land by Star Cement to the State Government for compensatory afforestation, he has launched a full scale attack on this newspaper, on officials (read bureaucrats) accusing them of leaking information. Is that information classified? I am referring to the story published by this paper on how the Government bent over backwards to facilitate the transfer of land by Star Cement to the Government for compensatory afforestation when the rule under Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) 2015, stipulates that a mining company which is operating in forest land should compensate the Government by way of payment for land acquisition by the Forest Department for compensatory afforestation.
The question asked by this paper is why Star Cement is getting favoured treatment? How did Star Cement own land in a tribal area which is a non-mining area? The Chief Minister points to Section 3(1) of the Meghalaya Transfer of Land (Regulation) Act 1971 which says “No land in Meghalaya shall be transferred by a tribal to a non-tribal or by a non-land tribal to another non-tribal except with the previous sanction of the competent authority: Provided that the Government of Meghalaya is satisfied it may, from time to time, by notification, prohibit any transfer of land within such area or areas as may be specified in the notification and there upon the competent authority shall not sanction any such transfer of land under the provision of this Act, within such area or areas. Provided further that no notification made under the preceding proviso shall apply: to transfer of land for any of the purposes mentioned in clause (e) or clause (f) of sub-section (I) of Section 4.”
(1) In granting or refusing sanction under section 3 the competent authority shall take into account the following matters according to the circumstances of each case:-
(e) Whether the land proposed to be transferred is actually required as a place of
public religious worship by any community or as burial or cremation ground.
(f) Whether the land sought to be transferred is for the purpose of implementing a
scheme to promote the interests of the tribals in the field of education or industry.
So the Government has as usual found the loophole in the Act to justify itself. Dr Mukul Sangma lectured the House on the importance of creating a favourable climate for industries as they were absorbing much of the power tariff which would otherwise have fallen on the consumers. He also argued vehemently on the need to sell the business potentials of the state and that the news report in question would create an unfavourable environment for potential investors.
Since the land of Simon Siangshai a tribal has been sold to Star Cement under Section 3 (1) of the Land Transfer Act which allows land alienation from a tribal to a non-tribal “in tribal interest” for the purpose of industries and education, the question one wishes to ask is (1) what is the annual revenue generated from limestone mining and cement production activities? (2) How many local tribals in all are employed in the cement companies of Jaintia Hills (3) How much revenue has accrued to cement companies from various subsidies they enjoy under the North East Industrial Promotion Policy (NEIPP). (4) Is it not possible for land in Meghalaya to be alienated in the same manner for other companies and individuals by using the above clause of the Land Transfer Act? This clause actually dilutes the entire purpose of the Land Transfer Act enacted with much enthusiasm for protecting tribal land from going into non-tribal hands (5) What is the environmental trade off in terms of deforestation, pollution, warming leading to climate change etc., since the Narpuh Reserve Forest is only about 4 kms away?
Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA),was constituted by a direction of the Supreme Court in October 30, 2002, asking the government to create a fund where all the payments received towards compensatory afforestation, additional compensatory afforestation, penal compensatory afforestation and net present value (NPV) of the diverted forest land will be deposited. The net present value is the amount that someone has to pay for diverting forest land for non-forest purposes. The amount will be determined by an expert committee appointed by the Centre. In such cases, the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980 requires that non-forest land, equal to the size of the forest being “diverted”, is afforested.
Since afforested land does not become a forest overnight, there is still a loss of the goods and services that the diverted forest would have provided in the interim period. These goods and services include timber, bamboo, fuel wood, carbon sequestration, soil conservation, water recharge, and seed dispersal. Afforested land is expected to take no less than 50 years to start delivering comparable goods and services. To compensate for the loss in the interim, the law requires that the Net Present Value (NPV) of the diverted forest is calculated for a period of 50 years, and recovered from the “user agency” that is “diverting” the forests.
It is to manage this money, and to use it for the designated purposes, that CAMPA was set up. The compensatory afforestation money and NPV are supposed to be collected from the user agency by the government of the state in which the project is located, and deposited with the central government. The money will eventually flow back to the state to be used for afforestation or related works. Nowhere does the Act say that the user agency can compensate by way of land in its possession. Star Cement was allowed to do so by violating the CAMPA.
The Chief Minister can argue till the cows come home that there was no wrongdoing and that the media here is acting as an agent provocateur at the behest of some vested interests. Well, some of us have been around long enough to know that we are neither unduly influenced by any vested interests and nor are we the lap-dogs of any politician. The media is here to do its job as watchdog. We are actually doing what the Opposition in the State is supposed to do but has failed to. There is a lot of wrongdoing in Meghalaya which is actively facilitated by a section of senior bureaucrats. Those with some ethics left and who disagree with the modus operandi adopted by certain unscrupulous politicians will of course be shunted out to manage some nondescript department.
The history of how cement companies came to Meghalaya is still fresh in our memories. When Mr JD Rymbai was the chief minister (between June 2006 to March 2007) he tried to block the setting up of cement companies who were waiting in a queue. He paid a heavy price for that. The cement lobby is a powerful one; as powerful as the coal lobby. They pulled all the stops and approached the Congress High Command. Mr JD Rymbai was summoned to Delhi by Sonia Gandhi who told him point blank, “Mr Rymbai step down; let Lapang take over.” The rest is history. The moment Lapang became chief minister all clearances were given to the cement companies without their having got clearance from the Union Ministry for Environment and Forests. To circumvent the Ministry clearance cement companies showed that they were set up on under five hectares of land. The five hectares were of course multiplied many times over. It was only when some concerned citizen knocked the doors of the apex court that a Joint Inspection Team (JIT) was set up and which certified that cement companies were indeed set up on forest land. Hence the compensatory afforestation!
Does Dr Sangma deny all this? Was there no wrongdoing during the respective Congress regimes in Meghalaya? Is it fair to get personal and demonise the media? Does he expect all media to patronise the Government?
The plight of the people of Meghalaya is that their land will be lost without their knowledge and understanding because contrary to belief the land no longer belongs to “the people/community.” It belongs to some people with political patronage, to politicians and to bureaucrats and the business community. Let’s not deceive ourselves. The only route to justice is to approach a court of law. Period.
And now that we know that cement companies are responsible for the waters of the nearby rivers turning toxic it is only a matter of time before the NGT gets its act together. And no Mr Chief Minister we are not enemies of Meghalaya. But yes we are enemies of the mafia!