SHILLONG:
Former chief minister and All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) leader Mukul Sangma has expressed surprise over the state government not doing enough to start legal coal mining in the state and has called for a proper investigation into the matter.
He alleged that the National People’s Party (NPP)-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government did not want legal mining despite the promises it had made and added that the matter calls for an investigation.
He said such an investigation was all the more necessary given the irregularities surrounding alleged illegal coal mining across the state and illegal transportation of the mineral at the cost of the state.
“Therefore it requires an investigation and that is what we have all along been demanding. Has the state government been responsive? No, the state government has all along been on a denial mode,” he said.
He recalled that the Meghalaya High Court has also taken cognisance of the matter and pulled up the state government adding the reasons were known to the people.
He said that despite people raising concerns over the goings-on the government has been meticulously maintaining the narrative that nothing was amiss.
He said illegal mining was continuing and this couldn’t be possible without the government’s patronage.
He said the high court had indicated that contempt proceedings should be initiated against some of the officers in some of the districts.
“These are glaring reflections of what is happening under the complete patronage of the government and that is a serious violation rather serious breach of the trust and confidence of the people of the state who have given them the mandate during the elections,” he added.
Further, he termed the promise made by the NPP and its alliance partners to ensure immediate resumption of coal mining as a “blatant lie”.
He also recalled how they (MDA) told the people mining would resume once they were in power. “Obviously they knew that they were all engaging in blatant lies,” he said.
“So you can understand the manner in which they try to take people for a ride. This is something which people have seen and people have understood and people know that they are engaging in nothing but lies during the elections,” he added.
Also reminding that the 2014 NGT blanket ban on coal mining was not on any mine which was in conformity with the various statutory laws of the land, the former chief minister said that the ban is on the unregulated mining which is not in conformity with the statutory laws. Therefore, the ban per se is not on coal mining, but on unregulated mining which was not in sync with the various statutory laws which govern the mining activities.