SHILLONG: Senior Congress leader Ampareen Lyngdoh has hit out at the BJP-led central government for not disclosing that the Ministry of Coal had agreed to exempt Meghalaya from the central mining acts with regard to coal and lignite.
In an affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court, the Centre informed that the ministry has given its consent in making the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, and the Coal Mines Nationalisation Act, 1973, non-applicable in Meghalaya.
The Ministry of Coal wrote a letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs on August 10, 2015 informing of the exemption.
“It is a big revelation for residents of Meghalaya… when a truth is revealed through an affidavit to the courts just prior to hearing of any petition, it is a complete sabotage,” she told a group of reporters on Monday.
She questioned the authorities for not informing the then state government, led by Congress in 2015, if the Ministry of Mining had already taken a decision to exempt the state under Para 12 (a) (b) of the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.
Stating that it is a complete breach of democratic procedures, she wondered as to the next step the National Green Tribunal (NGT) will take when it is only now being revealed that the state had already been exempted from mining regulation since 2015.
“We were not even informed of the important decision then. We cannot imagine that a resolution passed in the session of March, 2015 was forwarded and that information was not communicated to the state,” she said.
Criticising the Centre for manipulating the mining issue for the sake of politics alone, she claimed that the then Congress government could have taken so many important steps had the decision to exempt the state been communicated to it on time.
“What we need to figure now is who is responsible for not communicating this to the (then) state government, so that we can also proceed with the necessary legal action against the individual. Why were we not told?” Lyngdoh asked.
“Look at the complicated issues that have arisen because this information was withheld from us,” she said.
She added, “This is a sad situation as even the Supreme Court and the NGT was not aware of this. It is absolutely distasteful, the way they are playing politics with everything.
She hit out at the “tall claims” made by the BJP during its campaign during the assembly elections in 2018 that they will allow coal mining to be regularised within 6 months.
