One Krishan Kumar has written to Justice (retired) BP Katakey, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma and the Chief Secretary to once again complain against a coal baron, George S Marak, and alleged illegal doings by the latter in the export of coal from Gasuapara to Bangladesh.
Kumar stated that Marak has been granted permission by the state government to transport more than 25,000 tonnes of coal that originated in Jharkhand and is now supposedly stored in depots in Goalpara, Assam and Meghalaya’s Jadigittim and Gasuapara.
The complaint cast doubt on the validity of this, stating that both Jadigittim and Gasuapara only each have one depot and neither has the required paperwork from the pollution control board to operate. Both, he added, are anyway too small to accommodate the amount of coal mentioned. The coal trucks bringing in the consignment to Meghalaya should have been tracked by GPS devices but were not and the state government also failed to verify the transportation details of the coal coming from Jharkhand, Kumar further alleged.
He believes that the permission is in fact a cover to enable him to manipulate his stock register and dig up fresh Meghalaya coal (illegal under the ban against rat-hole mining) while passing off the mineral as having come from Jharkhand.
Kumar has a history of making allegations against Marak. In January of this year he claimed that fresh coal was being dug up and passed off as coming from Nagaland in order to bypass the ban.
That prompted a strongly-worded denial from Marak, who counter-claimed that Kumar and one other individual were involved in the “fraudulent sale of e-way bills to other exporters”. They were both investigated by the Meghalaya authorities and banned from engaging in coal export activities, Marak had written in a submission to the Chief Commissioner of GST.
