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Shillong: Meghalaya will soon have scientific mining after the Centre approved leases of four miners in the state.
“I am happy to inform that about a week or 10 days back, the Government of India approved the mining leases to four miners. Hence, we have overcome the largest hurdles that we had for the process of scientific mining and legal mining to start in the state,” Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said on Tuesday.
In April 2014, the National Green Tribunal imposed a blanket ban on coal mining and transportation in the state. With this ruling, the mining industry suffered a negative growth of 59.36% according to GSDP at constant prices in 2014-15, thereby affecting the GSDP as a whole, to register a negative growth of 2.82%. Contraction of GSDP came as a big blow to Meghalaya’s ambitions of achieving its revenue collection targets.
Taking cognizance of all this, the NPP-led MDA government provided much needed impetus to revive coal mining in the state. The Supreme Court on July 3, 2019, upheld the rights of people of Meghalaya over the natural resources. The apex court held that private as well as community landowners have both surface rights and sub-surface rights, and minerals are owned by private and community landowners.
In a significant step towards initiating scientific coal mining, the state government has availed the approval of the standard operating procedures for obtaining prospecting licence and mining lease for coal in March 2021.
Continuing the momentum, the Ministry of Coal on April 25 this year provided previous approval for mining lease to four applicants of the 17 prospecting license applicants.
As part of the scientific mining, reclamation of coal mining areas and use of advanced technologies, such as remote sensing, aerial surveys, and 3D modelling, would be prioritised and environmental impact would be mitigated significantly.
The income generated from the mining sector will be invested in the education and healthcare sectors for the socio-economic prosperity of the state.
