SHILLONG, March 21: The ban on coal mining and transportation imposed by the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal and the High Court’s reprimand to the state government seems to have had no effect as illegal coal mining continues unabated in the state. The state government’s repeated denial of any illegality with regard to coal mining was busted once again with the East Jaintia Hills district administration seizing a huge stock of illegally-mined coal from Rymbai and Sutnga areas.
The seizure was made on Monday by two separate teams comprising of magistrates, police and officials from the District Mineral Office (DMO) who had gone for inspection of coal lying along the Sutnga and Rymbai roads.
The latest seizure of illegally-mined coal comes just two weeks after the High Court of Meghalaya issued an order on March 7 maintaining that the Chief Secretary was responsible for implementing the ban imposed by the Supreme Court and the NGT and had directed her to ensure that all illegal mining activities are stopped without further delay.
The district administration was unable to assess the exact quantity of illegal coal seized during the inspection since the operation ran late into the night on Monday, a senior official said.
The official, who was part of the inspection team, told The Shillong Times that they lacked the expertise to pinpoint whether the seized coal had been recently extracted or not.
“We already have the data of the coal already extracted and declared. We are now sending our teams to identify the coal dumped outside the depots across the entire district,” the official said.
He revealed that the inspection exercise which began on Monday was meant to correlate the coal dump with the coordinates provided for the already extracted coal.
“If the coordinates do not match with the coal dump the stock will be seized,” he added.
The official also disclosed that the exercise followed a multipronged approach.
“First we get all the coordinates of the existing coal dumps which have been declared and then we trying to match the newly discovered dumps with the existing coordinate. What we noticed on Monday was that the location of most of the coal dumps did not match with the coordinates. We are declaring them as illegal coal or unauthorised coal and the district administration is seizing the stock,” the official said.
It may be pertinent to note that the High Court of Meghalaya had taken suo motu cognizance of an investigative report published by The Shillong Times on February 23 about rampant illegal rat-hole mining of coal at Nengchigen village in West Khasi Hills, and had directed the Director-General of Police and the Chief Secretary to file independent reports after visiting the site.
Subsequently, the Court had reprimanded the state government for doing precious little to end illegal mining and transportation of coal.
