SHILLONG, JAN 21: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Monday said the state government has submitted the mining plan and safety measures to the Directorate General of Mines Safety (DGMS), the approval of which is being awaited.
“(We are yet to know) whether DGMS will accept. There is no question of mining (to resume) if DGMS will not accept the mining plan and do not approve the safety measures that are being proposed,” Sangma told reporters here.
He however added, “Therefore we are very clear we want to ensure that livelihood of the people are considered and at the same time norms laid down by Government of India which are standard in the country are followed.”
Coal mining activities in Meghalaya has been banned by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for the past four years since April 17,2014.
Sangma had recently led a delegation of the MDA government to seek the intervention of the Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the matter.
“We had given a complete presentation on the issue before and after the ban on rat hole mining. After hearing out our proposition and ensuring safe mining, he (Singh) felt that there could be a way out if proper system is followed,” he said.
Stating that the problem of coal mining is multiple layered, the chief minister said, it is not only getting exemption from the provisions of the central acts but mining safety has to be worked out.
“It is a process that requires different agencies to come in but things will start moving once we get a structure on how we actually move forward and it requires us to get exemption of the MMDR Act which will allow us in such a manner for our people to continue the mining,” he added.
Asked, the chief minister claimed that the state government had submitted the mining plan multiple times adding however there were querries from the Ministry of Coal regarding certain issues.
“We have engaged an agency of the Government of India which is an expert on this aspect and those querries have been replied to,” he said adding “It was not replied for a very long time but then once we came to know about these querries we had written back to them.”
Meghalaya Legislative Assembly had earlier passed a resolution urging the Centre to issuing a presidential notification under Paragraph 12A(B) of the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution for rescinding the application of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 and Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act, 1973 to the tribal areas of the state of Meghalaya.
By Our Reporter
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