Chief Minister Conrad Sangma has said that he is not in a position to comment on whether open-cast progressive scientific mining of coal in Meghalaya will have any impact on vegetation and forest cover.
“Each one has their own mining plans. I am not an expert in the mining plans and hence I don’t want to comment on all those aspects,” Sangma told media persons here today.
Sangma said that all the mining plans will be approved by central government agencies.
He however said that the process for giving clearance for scientific mining is tedious because there are aspects of land holding being different in Meghalaya compared to other states and hence the policies that apply here are different from the policies that apply in other parts of the country.
“Keeping all those factors in mind the fact that this is happening for the first time, things are taking a bit longer than we would want to,” the chief minister said.
According to him, once there is a system in place in the coming months and years the following processes will be much smoother.
Sangma also said that the State government is happy that things are moving in the right direction and is hopeful that scientific mining of coal in Meghalaya would start soon.
Recently there were reports that experts acknowledged that open-cast progressive scientific mining of coal in Meghalaya would have an impact on vegetation and forest cover from open-cast mining would be greater than the traditional rat-hole mining practiced in the State for generations until the National Green Tribunal imposed a ban in 2014.
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.
Officials of the Central Mine Planning & Design Institute (CMPDI) 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.
