Bangladesh-bound coal trucks from Bhutan have been caught in the confusion following the Supreme Court’s January 15 order banning the transportation of extracted coal in Meghalaya .
Customs officials at Dawki in Meghalaya’s West Jaintia Hills district have allegedly prevented 28 coal-laden trucks from Bhutan from crossing over into Bangladesh. The trucks have been stranded there since Wednesday.
Bhutan exports coal to Bangladesh via India as per the South Asian Preferential Trade Arrangement, an inter-governmental groups formed by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC.
The 28 Bhutanese trucks had been cleared by customs officials for travel through India at Darranga in Assam’s Baksa district. Darranga adjoins Samdrup Jongkhar town in Bhutan.
The Darranga-Dawki trip entailed travelling 265 km via Guwahati on highways in Assam and Meghalaya. The Bhutanese trucks reached Dawki on Wednesday, hours after the apex court banned the transportation of coal extracted from the illegal rat-hole mines of Meghalaya.
“The officials at the Dawki ICP (integrated check post) said they have ordered not to let any coal truck pass and that the order does not mention whether the coal is from Meghalaya or Bhutan. I tried to convince them in vain that the Supreme Court’s order does not apply to third country exports with transit through India,” Dolly Khonglah, secretary of Meghalaya International Exporters’ Chamber of Commerce, told The Hindu on Thursday.
“Each coal truck is sealed, covered by tarpaulin and adheres strictly to the specified weight. Nevertheless, the customs have no right to stop them and can at best check the papers,” she said.
Customs officials in Shillong declined to speak while Tining Dkhar, Meghalaya’s Commissioner and Secretary for Mining and Geology, said he has taken up the matter with the authorities concerned. “There is no instruction to stop trucks from Bhutan,” he said.
An official of the Bhutanese Consulate in Guwahati said a “confusion” arising out of the ban on coal mined in Meghalaya could have led to the Bhutan trucks being stranded. “We are taking up the matter,” he said.
Coal from Bhutan was being exported to Bangladesh from the Meghalaya border since November 2018.
‘Freshly-mined coal’
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had banned rat-hole mining in Meghalaya on April 17, 2014 but had allowed transportation of coal that had been extracted till that day. After the ban, extracted coal assessed by government agencies was 2,325,663.54 metric tonnes against the 2,414,878.63 MT declared by the coal miners and traders.
The NGT set a timeframe for transporting the coal but kept extending the deadline, acting on pleas from the miners. A three-member committee set up by NGT had in December last year concluded that illegal coal mining was still going on, especially in East Jaintia Hills district.
“It seems that there is an attempt to show the freshly-mined coal... as the coal left out from the assessment and remained un-inventorised though mined prior to the said ban. The committee also apprehends that such freshly mined coal may be transported,” the report said.
During their field trips, members of the committee saw freshly-extracted coal, temporary tents where labourers were living and machinery including a freshly greased crane.
Apart from the NGT report, the Supreme Court went through a report by a Citizen’s Forum that accused the Meghalaya government of “actively colluding in helping miners” to extract coal by blatantly flouting the NGT ban.
