High Court pulls up Meghalaya govt. for illegal coal mining

An inference cannot be drawn that the State may not have been complicit in helping illegally-mined coal to be exported to Bangladesh, the court said

Meghalaya High Court declined to exonerate the state govt. from complicity in the export of illegally-mined coal to Bangladesh. | file photo | Photo Credit: Ritu Raj Konwar

GUWAHATI

The High Court of Meghalaya has declined to exonerate the Meghalaya government from complicity in the export of illegally-mined coal to Bangladesh. 

Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) regarding the export of coal through western Meghalaya’s Gasuapara land custom station on Tuesday, the court took note of the State government’s submission that a system has been put in place for checking the illegal mining and transportation of coal within the State. 

The court said even the assumption of some measures having been adopted would not exonerate the State or lead to any inference that the State may not have been complicit in the export of illegally-mined coal to Bangladesh before such a system was put in place. 

The PIL filed by Meghalaya-based trader Champer M. Sangma refers to the export of coal between December 2021 and May 2022 by an Assam-based company to Bangladesh. The court observed the affidavit filed by the respondent was “eerily silent” on the origin of the coal but documents showed the coal was obtained from two other companies “owned and controlled” by the same person or members of the family of the same person. 

The court also perused reports of an investigation by the relevant authorities in Assam which pointed to the respondent “indulging in creating a fictitious supply chain through the generation of fake tax invoices and e-way bills”. 

The court observed that the objective of the petition was to demonstrate the apparent complicity of the State government with the illegal miners of coal in Meghalaya and those involved in the illegal transportation of the illegally-mined coal. 

The National Green Tribunal banned hazardous rat-hole coal mining in Meghalaya in April 2014. 

“From or about the year 2016, there could have been no mining of coal in the State since it is the State government’s consistent stand that no license has yet been issued for undertaking scientific mining of coal and, by 2016, orders of the National Green Tribunal, as affirmed by the Supreme Court, were already in place completely banning the extraction of coal in the State of Meghalaya except in accordance with the law,” the high court’s order said. 

The court further observed that “a new method appears to have been put in place” through which coal illegally mined in Meghalaya is exported with forged documents showing such coal has been brought in from elsewhere.