Some public spirited advocates concerned about the coal mine disaster and the manner it was handled approached the Supreme Court on Wednesday and the case was listed for hearing on Thursday in the two-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi. The apex court has taken a grim view of the situation and held the state government solely accountable for failing to rescue the miners trapped inside the Ksan mine in Lumthari, East Jaintia Hills since December 13. The Court might have also taken cognizance of the fact that the mining inside the Ksan Mine was illegal. The apex court had in fact very recently allowed transportation of coal already mined before the NGT ban of April 2014. It did this after hearing a plea from the state government that fresh coal is not being mined – which actually should have amounted to perjury since illegal mining is carrying on in broad daylight.
On Thursday the Court took a humanitarian view of the mine disaster and ordered the state government to rescue the miners dead or alive. Onlookers from across the country fail to understand why the state government has been so tardy in this rescue mission. It is true that several NDRF personnel, Navy divers and Coal India personnel are present at the spot but what is needed is appropriate technology to dewater the mines. That appropriate technology is not available and the rescue team is rendered helpless because visibility is a problem and the water level too is an impediment. It is now 23 days since the miners were trapped inside the flooded coal pit. Mining expert Jaswant Singh Gill has repeatedly maintained that the rescue operations suffer from lack of expertise about the mine and the nature of the flooding. Instead of working like clockwork by following standard operating procedures the rescue team is in an exploratory, hit and miss sort of mission.
The Supreme Court alone can bring in salutary effect in a situation where those with vested interests in rat hole mining are trying to use all legal and constitutional instruments to buttress their arguments. While mining is an extractive industry and leaves behind a trail of death and destruction, rat-hole mining is even more disastrous as there are no rules to regulate the coal mine owners. The absence of a mining policy in Meghalaya is the result of collusion between the market, politics and the state. Rat-hole mining with its catastrophic consequences cannot be allowed to operate in a modern state where the human rights of labourers have to be respected too.
