SHILLONG: A citizens’ forum, which has approached the Supreme Court for a complete ban on coal mining in the state, has said mining has not helped the poor but only intensified poverty and inequality in Jaintia Hills.
Releasing two volumes of the Citizens’ Charter on Sunday, Thma U Rangli Juki member Angela Rangad said coal miners are misleading the courts and undermining the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to get transportation orders. “We are trying to understand the conspiracy. Everybody seems to be involved. It has been an absolute loss not only in terms of the environment but even from the revenue point of view,” said Rangad.
Asking the court to put a stop on mining in Meghalaya and grant no further transportation orders, the activists said the extracted coal that is lying in some areas should be used by the government in public undertakings.
Volume 1 of the charter was prepared quickly because the members wanted the report to reach the Supreme Court when the hearing on coal case was on.
Rangad claimed that the report has been endorsed by many individuals and she added that the citizens’ report will be placed in the public domain and people can still endorse the report. “It is a citizens’ report to basically put together as much as we know about the whole coal mining in Meghalaya,” she said.
The citizens’ report comprises media reports and the first volume depends also on secondary material such as in-depth research papers by many people such as the North East Research Centre in Guwahati and individual people who have done works on mining etc and depended heavily on CAG reports as well as RTI reports filed by activist and CSWO president Agnes Kharshiing. Rangad asserted that coal mining has not helped the poor but instead intensified poverty and inequality in Jaintia Hills and not helped in the livelihood of people. “Volume 1 deals mainly with the issue of how coal mining has actually meant land grabbing, undermining and destroying the principle of Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, and how it (coal mining) has destroyed livelihoods,” she said.
The activists have demanded that there should be GIS mapping of Meghalaya to know about land grabbing. Rangad refuted the claims of miners that coal mining has benefitted the state by asserting that 76 per cent of the local tribal community is landless. “If they say coal mining has benefitted, how come there is so much of landlessness in East Jaintia Hills? So it has not brought development,” Rangad said. Terming the state government’s stand that the state is exempted from all central acts a lie, she said all documents show that the state government admits that they fall under the MMDR Act.
A committee was also set up by NGT in 2014 to create guidelines for transportation of already extracted coal and headed by KS Kropha, then additional chief secretary of the state puts this penalty/royalty question in black and white.
“It (the committee) talked about all the royalty which has been collected from coal in Meghalaya is actually not a royalty but they call it by many names. It is a penalty being collected under Section 21 of the MMDR Act because they are violating the MMDR Act,” Rangad said.
The committee also pointed to the absolute environmental degradation in which rivers are turning acidic and the NGT panel of BP Katoki report also stresses on the same issue.
“For every square kilometer of area, there are 52 mines and a total of 24,626 mines in East Jaintia Hills alone. There was so much of land grabbing in which community land areas was converted (to mine areas) by force in many places with collusion of many institutions with JHADC etc,” Rangad said.
She cited the case of Samasi when the headman’s son got killed because he opposed grabbing of community land.
Alleging that the JHADC is also colluding with miners, Rangad said there is extortion, land grabbing, criminality to establish the coal mafia raj which has been happening over a period of time and the DMR, the check gates, the Transport Department and law enforcement have to be held accountable.
Rangad said the committee headed by Kropha managed to do a good job where they surveyed every mine and geo-tagged the stock piles. The mine owners were asked to declare how much coal there is to understand the amount of coal to be transported after the NGT order.
“The committee was able to provide how much coal is left and gave very good guidelines of how to transport the coal. If those guidelines were followed, within a matter of three months after the NGT committee gave its report, the coal would have been finished,” she said.
Interestingly, the coal miners made false declarations, Kropha in the report said, “There is mala fide intentions of all these false declarations.”
Based on the false declarations, the committee said the assessed coal will be transported and she maintained that the committee’s report should be taken as the baseline data of how much coal was left — 65,81,147 MT. She asserted that the miners declared 120,94,634 MT which was double of what has been assessed.
The “so-called” penalty which is charged under the MMDR Act is Rs 675 per MT, based on the guidelines which were subsequently notified. The state government should have received royalty/penalty worth Rs 816,38,77,950.
In addition to the above, there is also the later order of NGT which established ‘Meghalaya Environment Protection and Restoration Fund’ into which 10 per cent on the market value of the coal- Rs.485 per MT.
“If you calculate all of this, the total revenue collected by the state government should have been Rs 1135,57,34,245,” Rangad said.
She pointed that former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma changed the amount and informed that the total quantum of extracted coal was assessed at 87,13,103.221 MT while an application filed by Sonny Khyriem stated that according to an affidavit filed by the Directorate of Mineral Resources, the total declared coal was 1,04,36,620.7 tonnes.
“They kept pulling out different figures and confused the court and wilfully misled the Supreme Court and NGT,” she said.
According to her, the state government should go back to Kropha’s baseline data and it should have understood how much coal is still there and the government will know from the weighbridges and on how much mineral is there.
“One truck will use the same challans 10 times because in the weighbridge nobody checks. None of them have the green tag by NGT,” Kharshiing said.
Speaking about the MDA government, Kharshiing pointed to media reports on alleged nepotism on coal assessment with regard to fresh assessment of coal belonging to the brother of minister Kyrmen Shylla.
“All this points out that it is not complacency but active participation and collusion on the part of the government,” Rangad said.