Shillong, Sep 18: The state ruling party’s youth wing, the National People’s Youth Front (NPYF) has come out strongly against the recent Union Environment and Forest Ministry’s office order which exempts uranium and other rare earth minerals from the purview of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA).
The EIA is a process to hold public hearings and public consultations mandatory before mining. With the office order, it means that it will make uranium mining free of encumbrances without the atomic energy authorities having to run the gauntlet of people’s scrutiny as has been in the past.
In a memorandum the NPYF has urged Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma to intervene and to “impress upon the Government of India that policy changes of such significance be transparently deliberated in the Parliament and state legislatures in consultation with the stakeholders in the spirit of cooperative federalism”.
The letter was signed by NPYF president Wailadmiki Shylla and working President Bajop Pyngrope. Both are preparing to submit another memorandum to the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council.
Uranium mining is a touchy subject in the state where the people in the uranium rich areas of West and East Khasi Hills bordering Bangladesh have been resisting all attempts by the Government of India to mine the atomic mineral. The anti-mining campaigns have hinged largely on the mandatory public hearings during which the public have said “No to mining”, emphatically over the years.
The memorandum makes no mention of its own uranium dilemmas and the wars that the people waged against it in the home state. Rather the letter is very diplomatically worded, probably because the National People’s Party (NPP) is an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and would not like to ruffle their Delhi high command’s feathers.
In that spirit, the NPYF memorandum notes that “exemption of critical mineral mining from public hearings represents a significant policy shift that must be understood within “India’s National Critical Mineral Mission framework”.
The letter urged that the national advancement and investments must not be made at the cost of environmental and indigenous people’s living spaces which, the NPYF letter notes, is where 54 per cent of critical materials are found.
The three-page letter also talks about several Supreme Court rulings which underline that the concerns of people and public hearings are not mere formalities but substantive issues which must be compulsorily addressed. It notes that previously public hearings were mandatory and people had a voice to raise their concerns, but with the September 8, 2025 office memorandum, (OM) people will be silenced.
The OM, the NPYF said, has sparked intense debates about the balance between strategic imperatives and democratic participation in environmental governance.
At the same time, the OM declared critical minerals and its mining as “national and security’ concern.
The controversial OM has created unease across states in the country.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin had given an immediate reaction on Friday as he wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to withdraw the OM, exempting the requirement of public consultation for all mining projects of atomic minerals.
He was also alarmed that all such projects were to be appraised at the Central level, irrespective of the lease area involved. Tamil Nadu’s coastal districts are endowed with rare earth minerals where the ecological fragile region needs to be protected at any cost just as the hills of the Northeastern region cannot be allowed to be mined without public oversight.
It is to be noted that the EIA Notification of 1994, as amended in 1997, introduced mandatory public hearings, a landmark step that has since become integral to participatory environmental governance and was reinforced in the EIA notification of 2006.
It is also worth mentioning that for Meghalaya, the situation is even more critical as almost the entire state’s area falls within 100 kms of the international border which has already been given carte blanche for any kind of ‘national security” projects without the need for forest clearances under another controversial law, that is, the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, 2023.
