Scientific coal mining to start within this year: Meghalaya CM

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaMarch 16, 2022

Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday said scientific coal mining will start within this year. 

“I cannot give assurance in the House, but we do expect in the best case scenario that within this year anything between six to eight months time, few of them will start getting approval for the mining plan and that they should be able to start the mining activities very soon,” Sangma said while replying to a query raised by Nongpoh legislator Mayralborn Syiem. 

At present, there were 17 applicants who have submitted their applications for grant of prospecting license for coal and all have received approval of the central government and they are now in the exploration stage for generating geological report before obtaining mining leases, he said. 

Stating that it will be a process which will start slow as it is happening for the first time, Sangma said, “Therefore it will be a learning for everyone not only for the land owners, the miners but also for the government agencies.” 

“While we do that, we may face a bit of delay in the first few cases but as we move forward and we are able to streamline the process, people start getting used to it, I hope that we will see more applications coming in and more scientific mining and that is where we will see more of the revenue may also grow up exponentially and we may reach the royalty and non-tax revenue of the government at the same level where it used to be before we had the ban on coal mining in the state. (Therefore), we expect that we will see some activities in this calendar year,” he added. 

The chief minister also informed that multiple awareness programmes for miners were held in the different coal-rich districts of the state. 

“We are providing support hand holding in every step and we will continue to give training and based on that we are seeing the number of applications,” he said. 

Nongthymmai legislator Charles Pyngrope wanted to know if the government will consider increasing the price of the challan for increasing the government’s own tax revenue since the challan, which is at Rs 13,000 – Rs 14,000, is being sold at a very high rate in the market.

To this, the chief minister said, “I am not aware of the point but of course i have noted the concern but revenue is on the basis of per metric ton from the mining side where as production goes up the revenue per metric ton will also go up.”

Earier, Sangma said in order to raise state’s own tax revenue through scientific coal mining, state government after the Supreme Court’s order and judgement dated July 3, 2019 allowing coal mining in the state in compliance of MMDR Act, 1957 and chapter-V of Mineral Concession Rules, 1960 has notified Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for grant of prospecting license/or mining lease for sustainable and scientific coal mining in the state dated on March 5, 2021 along with an office memorandum for applying to the Director of Mineral Resources to undertake prospecting operating for coal under the provisions of second proviso to sub-section (1) of section 4 of the MMDR, Act, 1957.