A farmer of East Jaiñtia Hills has demanded an illegal coal miner to compensate her for the loss of her rice crop and destroying her agriculture land.
The farmer from Mooland village, Rida Dkhar told Highland Post that her livelihood is based on her farmland on which she cultivates. But the coal miner, Riyo Siangshai had mined coal next to her paddy field and dumped the coal there.
This proves that despite the Supreme Court ban on rat hole mining still being in place, this illegal practice is still continuing under the nose of the district administration and the government officials. It is to be noted that the Supreme Court has allowed scientific mining with an approved plan under the MMDR Act and not rat-hole mining.
Dkhar and her family depend on these lands for their survival. But this has been disrupted by Siangshai who started to mine for coal next to her fields there and also dumped the illegally mined coal next to her paddy fields.
The local village authorities had also warned Siangshai to stop mining and dumping the coal there but that warning had failed to deter her for the past year and months.
The farmer said that the coal that is collected on the border of her paddy fields has leached into her agriculture land and has destroyed its fertility. The land has been spoilt and nothing can grow productively now over there, she said. She wants the coal miner to compensate her for her loss.
Dkhar also said that the miner who had been digging for coal in her own land, but had continued to tunnel under her paddy fields and encroached into her land from under the ground.
“In the last months of 2021 my paddy fields collapsed as the coal diggers’ underground tunnel collapsed. Then only we came to know that the coal miner was digging under our rice fields,” the farmer said.
Since the tunnel collapsed, the mining has stopped but the coal dumps are still there. Over the months, the farmer emphasized that her paddy fields has been destroyed and endangered her only livelihood.
The farmer has been asked to seek legal opinion as the coal mining case is still live before the courts.
Rat hole mining has destroyed agricultural fields massively in the Jaiñtia Hills where people had taken to rat-hole mining for coal. Farmers and agriculturists have been suffering in silence over the decades as their lands have been destroyed by the mining and the leaching from the massive coal depots across the region.
Locals said that this Moolang case is probably the first time a farmer has come out to demand compensation from the coal miners in the entire drama of illegal coal mining in the state.
