Despite the Meghalaya High Court continuing to lambast the State government’s failure to crack down on rampant illegal coal mining in the State, Meghalaya chief minister Conrad Sangma said that the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ban on coal mining was too sudden.
Sangma made the comment when interacting with the media here today after attending the inaugural function of the G20 conclave ‘Nature Solves’.
It may be mentioned that the NGT had banned illegal coal mining and transportation in the State in 2014.
According to Sangma, people in Meghalaya have been engaged in coal mining for the last 200 years and their livelihood is based around mining. He also said that and unless and until alternate forms of livelihood are available, people will keep going back to mining activities.
“It is not possible for the State administration to completely stop everything. In a sense, we cannot go and move from one side to another, but efforts are on. So therefore the only long term solution to put an end to such activities is by having a legal policy and that has been done. Scientific mining has been introduced. The other option is to create more alternatives for livelihood,” Sangma said.
Asked if the NGT ban was inhuman, Sangma said that looking at the entire process the NGT did as per its mandate.
“But at the end of the day, these kinds of decisions need to be taken in the form of a transition aspect. I would see five years as a period where we stop certain activities, another five years to transition into new technology and another five years to stop everything completely. So you have to allow the transition to take place in a justified manner and that’s what we felt was missing to some extent. It was very sudden for the people. They woke up next morning and what they’ve been doing for 200 years they were told that they can no longer do it. There are implications and challenges of it. And that’s what we have been seeing the trickle effects of that in the last ten years,” he added.
On the possible use of drone technology to map coal mining activities in the State, Sangma said that such an attempt would be difficult since the area where mining is taking place is vast.
Stating that the authorities would require a huge number of drones for such a purpose, Sangma said that in the past they have used drone technology to map the entire stock of the coal whether legal or illegal.
However, the chief minister added that this can be examined and can be one option to map mining activities but it would require financial resources and manpower.
It may be mentioned that four miners have been given permission to start scientific mining in Meghalaya.
Relating to this, Sangma said that details are being worked out and within a matter of few months the authorised miners would be able to start scientific mining.
