Shillong: On December 4, 2018 the Supreme Court allowed transportation of coal ostensibly extracted before the NGT ban on April 2014, up to January 31, 2019. Since then thousands of coal trucks have been lining the Shillong-Guwahati highway. Hundreds of those trucks are parked on the Umiam bridge and prevent the smooth passage of other passenger vehicles.
“We were stuck for over two hours on the bridge while returning from Guwahati airport and reached home after midnight,” said S Lyngdoh who had come on a flight from Bangalore with her family, adding that her children were sleepy and hungry. What was a vacation for them turned out to be a harrowing experience on the return journey home.
This has been the plight of all travellers especially those returning late evening. No police personnel are in sight to regulate the traffic. Passengers are led to believe that the police- trucker nexus is endemic hence they are left to their elements.
Many passengers also question why the coal carrying trucks are not using the Umroi bypass and clogging up the narrow Umiam-Shillong road. They also wonder if the Umiam bridge can hold so many trucks each one carrying over 20 tonnes of coal.
Many questions remain unanswered on the coal assessment issue. In August 2014 the official committee appointed by the NGT had assessed coal from all the districts of Meghalaya at 65.81 lakh MT. Since then the NGT ban was lifted nine times. The ban was lifted for the tenth time on December 4, 2018.
It’s interesting how the assessment of coal is being played around with. Suddenly in 2018 around 5 lakh MT of coal was freshly assessed in South Garo Hills. Officials claimed that it was lying in the open until March 6, 2018. The Supreme Court allowed transportation of that coal from March 28, 2018 to May 31, 2018. Recently, Advocate General Amit Kumar and Ranjan Mukherjee, appearing for the state government, argued that 1.76 lakh MT of coal is actually available on ground and is old stock coal lying since 2014.
The advocates never mentioned as to which official authority actually ascertained that the coal stock is not freshly mined which also includes the 5 lakh MT that was earlier allowed.
Four years after the ban how is it that mine owners suddenly realised that their coal measuring 5 lakh MT was not assessed originally? And how and why did the state officials oblige and certify accordingly towards the last months of 2017?
If permission to transport the 5 lakh MT of coal was granted for South Garo Hills only how come coal was also being transported from other districts?
Has the Supreme Court appointed a neutral agency to oversee and keep check against illegal transportation of coal? The NGT appointed such a Committee for a brief period in 2015 when some environmentalists and Supreme Court lawyers were appointed as Commissioners to monitor the process for a few months.
Now that 1.76 lakh MT of coal has been assessed as being “old” coal to transport that at 9 tonnes per truck would require 19,000 truck loads. It is an open secret that 9 tonnes is only on paper. Each truck carries 20-25 tonnes. In that case it would only take a total of 9500 trucks. If 1000 trucks are moving from the different coal fields daily, then the coal should all be transported within 10-12 days. But coal will continue to be transported up to January 31, 2019.
Hence this matter needs a more judicious deliberation by the Supreme Court in the next hearing on January 15.
The government advocates had also pleaded that NGT had only banned rat-hole mining and that the apex court should specify what other forms of mining are allowed.
The point to be noted is that so far only rat hole mining is practised in Meghalaya and there is resistance from mine owners to shift to scientific mining methods. So the question of other methods does not arise as yet minus a Mining Policy and regulatory protocols.
