Coal transportation banned in Meghalaya after SC directive

Within hours of the Supreme Court’s directive to ban transportation of all coal in the state till February 19, the state government on Tuesday had issued an order to that effect.

The order issued by Meghalaya chief secretary Y Tsering said: "In pursuance of the directions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in its sitting today the 15.01.2019 as communicated by the learned Advocate General, Govt. of Meghalaya, transportation of coal in the state of Meghalaya is hereby stopped with immediate effect. All authorities concerned are hereby directed to ensure compliance of the aforesaid directions of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India without fail.”

Slamming the Meghalaya government on the illegal coal mining issue, the apex court on Tuesday said that, the state government has failed to contain illegal coal mining in the state.

The apex court also refused to grant more time to the mine owners to transport the extracted coal for sale.

A 22-member activist group had recently submitted a Citizens’ Report to the Supreme Court and seeking to stop all types of illegal coal mining in the state and the report exposed how the Meghalaya government’s involvement in illegal coal mining in the state despite the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ban and how the government helped the coal miners to illegally extract and transportation in blatant violations of the NGT and Supreme Court orders.

The Citizens’ Report said: “For the Government of Meghalaya and the Coal Mining lobby NGT orders were more about finding ways to cock-a-snook at the spirit of the legal intervention. Rather than find ways to put a stop to ecologically destructive, economically corrupt, criminally dangerous form of mining prevalent in Meghalaya and look for ways in which mining could exist in consonance withexisting National laws and best practices, both the Government and coal mining lobby used the legal opportunities provided by the ‘interim’ orders of the NGT to transport ‘already extracted coal’.”

“On 9th June 2014, NGT said - We are of the considered view that to a limited extent, we should permit the transportation of the already extracted coal lying in open near the mining sites. However, such removal shall be subject to strict supervision and directions of the following Committee and the terms and conditions of this Order:-

"We hereby constitute a Committee of the following :

(1) Director of Mines, Meghalaya.

(2) Member Secretary, Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board.

(3) Members Secretary, Assam State Pollution Control Board.

(4) Sr. Scientist of the Central Pollution Control Board.

(5) Sr. Representative of Ministry of Environment & Forests.

(6) Principal Secretary, Mining & Geology Dept. Government of Meghalaya.

"This committee miserably failed to do its job. In a situation where time and information was of the essence, this committee failed to frame requisite guidelines for transportation of extracted coal, it delegated its powers to already compromised government departments and authorities. This led NGT to pass strictures against this committee on 01 August 2014. NGT was surprised to observe that this committee over valued the extracted coal as well as put on record unverified claims by the Coal Miners/Traders:

"In fact, the recent report submitted by the Committee appointed by us vide its order dated 9th June, 2014 states that nearly 3659152 metric tonnes of coal as declared by the mine owners/managers but the same was assessed by the Committee to be 3736352 metric tonnes in the report. It is also stated that the extracted quantity of the coal declared by the mine owners/managers which could not be verified is 8587147 metric tonnes. According to them, the valuation of extracted coal is approximately Rs 18,000 crore as on date,” the report stated.

The Citizens’ Report further said: “This variation in estimation and verification and lack of intent to frame guidelines about transport, weighing and taxation of coal is not surprising. The mining, transport and trade of Coal in Meghalaya has always worked without any effective regulation. Any attempt to regulate the industry has led to ‘violent’ upsurge created by the coal barons or subversion of legal mechanisms helped along by the coal lobby’s representatives within the government. Although NGT’s order came as a shock for the coal establishment, once they knew that the NGT may allow transportation of coal after estimation and verification of already extracted coal – this coal lobby started finding out ways in which this Tribunal order could be bent in order to go back to business asusual. So what was this ‘Business as Usual’? Answer lies in the annual audit reports put out by the  Comptroller & Auditor General of India. As coal mining contributed to the revenues of the state exchequer, Audit reports annually noticed discrepancies in the way Coal Mining industry was violating the existing regulatory mechanism to a) Continue their unregulated, environmentally destructive mining b) Continue to flout all taxation and transportation norms to steal money which was meant for State Revenue.”

On the basis of the CAG report, the Citizens’ Report also said: “On page 62 of CAG 2014 Report – CAG succinctly points to the immensity of illegality and criminality underpinning coal mining in Meghalaya and the government’s wilful participation in this illegality leading to the major revenue loss to the public exchequer."

The 380-page second Citizens’ Report highlights, how the illegal mining is continued despite the ban and the report has been complied by substantiating facts and figures based on RTI information, CAG reports, research papers, affidavits filed by different individuals and published news in various newspapers.

Fifteen miners are trapped inside an illegal 370-feet deep flooded coal mine in the East Jaintia Hills district in the state since December 13.