Shillong, Feb 16: The State Government on Friday refused to comment on whether or not the opencast progressive scientific coal mining is feasible for the State stating that there are experts from Government of India agencies to approve that.
“The mining plans are made by mining engineers and experts. I will not be in a position to comment on it and that is the reason why we have the experts from Government of India agencies to approve that and obviously they will study all aspects and only then,” said Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma.
At a time when the stage is being set for open-cast progressive scientific mining of coal in Meghalaya, experts of the Central Mine Planning & Design Institute Limited (CMPDIL) are of the opinion that the impact on vegetation and forest cover through improvised rat-hole mining would have been minimal as compared to open-cast mining.
Stating that he is not an expert in mining plans and does not want to comment on all that aspects, he however said, “But all the plans will be approved by the central government agencies which is being done and the process of course is tedious there are different aspects of land holdings being different in our state as compared to the others hence the policy that applies here are different from the policies that are applied in the rest of the country”.
Justifying that it is taking a longer time than expected, he said, “But once when we have a system that comes into place, the policies and as and when the tweaking takes place for the case for Meghalaya and wherever adjustment need to be made based on different conditions I am pretty sure that in the coming months and years the following processes will be much more smoother”.
“We are happy things are moving in the right direction and we are very hopeful that things should be happening very soon so let’s wait and hope for the best we are positive but we do not want to share more on it,” he added.
The Centre has given clearance to four applicants to start scientific mining of coal in Meghalaya and the final step left for resumption of mining is the environment clearance as per the Environment Impact Assessment notification of 2006, which is likely to take 4-5 months.