People will indulge in illegal coal mining till alternate livelihood options are available: Meghalaya CM

Scientific mining will soon start in Meghalaya and efforts are on to minimize illegal coal mining in the state, the CM said

Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said on Thursday that scientific mining will soon start in Meghalaya and efforts are on to minimize illegal coal mining in the state.

“Activities are still going on, but we are putting in the effort to minimize such activities,” he added.
Chief Minister Sangma asserted that until alternate forms of livelihood are not generated, people will keep going back to illegal coal mining, as they have been engaged in the activity for the last 200 years and that is their only livelihood option.

“People have been engaged in this form of mining from last 200 years and the livelihood has been based around that. Unless and until alternate forms of livelihood don’t come up people will keep going back into those activities because it is not possible for administration to completely stop everything but effort is on,” CM Sangma added.

Reacting to the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) ban on coal mining in 2014, CM Sangma termed the move as sudden, with no room for transition for the locals to find alternate livelihoods.

“NGT did what it felt was correct but all kinds of decisions need to be taken in the form of transition aspect also… You have to allow the transition to take place in a justified manner but that was missing; whatever people have been doing for 200 years was suddenly stopped,” he said.

According to him, the NGT could have given five years to stop certain activities, another five years to transit into new technology, and then stopped everything in the next five years.

“The way I would have looked at it that I would see five years as period where we stop certain activities, in another five tears to transit it to new technology and another five years where we would be able to stop everything completely. So you have to allow the transition to take place in a justified manner. That’s what we felt was missing,” CM Sangma added.

Sharing long-term solutions to completely stop illegal coal mining, he said, “One is to come up with policies that will legalize and create alternatives.”

He added that the government is coming up with different forms of livelihood in the agriculture and tourism sectors.

Reacting to a question on the repeated intervention of the High Court Sangma said, “The government has its machineries to monitor such cases. The process is on the government side and all actions are taken to curb illegal coal mining.”

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