SHILLONG, Jan 15: The National People’s Party (NPP) on Sunday criticised the Congress regime for doing nothing to reverse the ban on coal mining that stopped the most important source of revenue generation in the state and asserted that the party is putting in all efforts to initiate scientific mining of the mineral after the Supreme Court order in July 2019 lifted the ban.
“The National Green Tribunal banned coal mining in our state in 2014 with an order that scientific mining should be introduced in Meghalaya. Since then nothing was done either by the central or the state government to initiate scientific mining in the state,” NPP state president WR Kharlukhi said.
Stating that coal caters to the needs of thousands of families, he said that the single decision deprived people of their fundamental right to earn a livelihood.
Talking about the impact of the ban, he said, “The ban dispossessed the Jaintia Hills Autonomous District Council and the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council of their primary source of revenue. The staff of both councils could not be paid their salaries for almost a year.”
“As a cascading effect of the ban, cess from coal for education could not be collected. The Education department, highly dependent on the revenue from the cess, could not pay salaries to the teachers for months leading to multiple protests and strikes by them,” he added.
