Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma has said that the process is on to start scientific mining of coal in Meghalaya.
Sangma told reporters on Thursday that there are large numbers of individual miners who have already applied for prospective licenses and about 15-18 of them have received it also.
“Some of them have also gone ahead and submitted their mining plans which will then get the approval from different agencies and then the process of scientific mining can also start,” he said.
Sangma then said that the steps had been initiated based on the Supreme court ruling in July 2019.
“Let’s hope that we see some mining taking place. Although it is a complicated process we will wait and watch but the process is on,” Sangma stated.
On September 26, the Meghalaya High Court asked the state government to initiate a comprehensive process for permitting the mining of coal in the state.
“A comprehensive process may be initiated by the State government, at its discretion, for permitting mining of coal upon due adherence to the provisions of the (MMDR) Act of 1957,” a full bench headed by Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee had said in its order passed while hearing a PIL on the matter.
The bench had also directed the state government to come up with final plans for auctioning and transportation of the over 31.26 lakh of already extracted coal lying in the different parts of the state.
“Final plans for transportation and auction should be placed before the matter is taken up next and the process of auction started, if possible. The matter will appear in three weeks hence,” it had said.
